Recent advances in optical technologies for creating ultra-high capacity wireless indoor networks

Optical wireless communication is a powerful alternative in local area networks for wireless radio-based communication. We explored directional infrared beams which each can offer an independent ultra-high capacity communication link. Based on diffractive modules, we designed and validated wavelength-tunable 2D beam steering techniques which readily scale up to beyond hundred beams. 60GHz mm-wave radio modules were deployed for user device localization and upstream communication. We have realized our concept in a laboratory setup and validated it with streaming of multiple 10GbE high-definition video signals.