MIMO optical communication systems based on broadband transmitters and receivers

Abstract

A multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) optical communication system is proposed. In the MIMO optical communication system, a series of broadband sources with different spectra act as the transmitters, and a compact imaging chip sensor accompanied by a disorder dispersion component and a calculating component serve as the receivers. Because the spectral ranges of the sources are overlapped, the number of the signal channels is not restricted by the bandwidth of the communication band and the characteristics of the sources. L1-norm regularization, L2-norm regularization, and the simulated annealing algorithms are used to solve matrix equations for decoding the signals at the receivers. A proof-of-concept experiment using on-off keying modulation has been done to prove the feasibility of the design. The experimental results demonstrate that the signals decoded by the receivers fit well with those generated from the transmitters. Besides the function of communications, the broadband sources are suitable to act as illumination sources because the white color lights in the visible band are more comfortable for human eyes compared with monochromatic lights used in traditional visible light communication (VLC) systems. We also prove that the MIMO optical communication system can operate in the infrared band. The infrared communication (IC) system has potential applications in situations requiring communication in a dark environment that cannot be realized by VLC systems.