Adaptive Optical Wireless Networks: End-to-End Link Delay Optimization

Wireless communications offer an attractive option for many military, commercial as well as personal communication needs because of flexibility, cost effectiveness, and mobility. The quality features of wireless communications have led to tremendous growth in the demand for wireless networks and has led to development of novel technologies that raise the need for broadband wireless communications. Optical wireless systems offer high transmission rates that can accommodate these broadband needs. However, optical wireless links can be prone to atmospheric changes that can result in performance degradation. Therefore, optical wireless networks should have flexible links and must be adaptive. In this paper, we focus on the adaptability of optical wireless networks and propose new heuristics for the optimization of communication delay in a flexible link regime for networks with bounded and unbounded degree transceivers. Extensive simulations are conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed heuristics to validate the improvement in network functionality as compared to the inadaptable environment. Simulation results show that networks adopting proposed heuristics achieve a 50% reduction in average packet delay as compared to inadaptable networks.