Abstract:
The increasing number of mobile devices and advanced multimedia applications combined with the worldwide adoption of social media has led to an exponential growth in mobile data traffic at a global level. 5G and B5G wireless networks are envisaged to meet this extraordinary data demand, where emerging applications and services such as Smart City, Smart Buildings, Factories of Future, Intelligent Transportation Systems, Smart Grid and the Internet of Things will play a significant role beyond voice and data services for users.

To address these challenges there are a number of options including (i) the spatial reuse of the frequency spectrum in dense networks by adopting higher spectral efficiency modulation and coding techniques; (ii) spectrum sharing, hoping and borrow; (iii) moving to higher RF bands (i.e., beyond 300 GHz); and (iv) shifting to entirely to the optical spectrum bands. The Optical Wireless Communications (OWC)  technology (including Free Space Optical communications or Visible Light Communications (VLC)) offers  opportunities in three distinctive optical band of infrared, visible, and ultraviolet that could be deployed in indoor and outdoor environment as well as underwater.

High speed signal transmission, operation in unregulated spectrum, robustness to electromagnetic interference, spatial frequency reuse and inherent security, high energy efficiency (i.e., a green technology) and reduced interference are some of the main advantages of OWC, which is positioned as a powerful alternative and complementary technology to RF solutions both at backhaul and access network levels.

The recent surge in research and development activities in OWC has led to the development of new solutions capable of delivering ubiquitous, high date rate, and low-cost wireless access networks in a variety of scenarios, as will be described throughout this Workshop. The workshop is composed of two sessions as outlined below:

Session 1:

Moderator: Murat Uysal, Ozyegin University, Turkey

(20’) Zhengyuan (Daniel) Xu, “Optical Wireless Communication over Broad Spectra”

(20’) Majid Safari, “MIMO Free-space optical communication: Sparse or Monolithic apertures”

(20’) Murat Uysal, “A Custom-Design Atmospheric Channel Emulator for the Performance Evaluation of Free Space Optical Communication Systems”

(20’) Rafael Perez Jimenez, “Visible Light Communciations and IoT applications”

Coffee Break

Coffee Break

Session 2:

Moderator: Hany Elgala, State University of New York at Albany, USA

(20’) Petr Chvojka, “Overview of Visible Light Communications”

(20’) Ampalavanapillai Nirmalathas, “Multigigabit Wireless Access for Indoor Applications Using Optical Wireless Transmission”

(20’) Hany Elgala, “Visible Light Based Backscatter Communication”

(20′) Behrooz Makki, “On the performance of RF-FSO systems”

(20’) Panel discussion