Sort Range Optical Wireless Communication

It is commonly accepted that the next generation of wireless communication systems, usually referred to as 4G systems, will not be based on a single access technique but it will encompass a number of different complementary access technologies. The ultimate goal is to provide ubiquitous connectivity, integrating seamlessly operations in most common scenarios, ranging from fixed and low-mobility indoor environments in one extreme to high-mobility cellular systems in the other extreme. Surprisingly, perhaps the largest installed base of shortrange wireless communications links are optical, rather than RF, however. Indeed, ‘point and shoot’ links corresponding to the Infra-Red Data Association (IRDA) standard are installed in 100 million devices a year, mainly digital cameras and telephones. In this paper we argue that optical wireless communications (OW) has a part to play in the wider 4G vision.