On the Performance of GI-POF-assisted Indoor Multi-Cell Wireless Optical Communication System

The concept of graded-index plastic optical fiber (GI-POF)-assisted indoor multi-cell wireless optical communication system for in-home networks is proposed and experimentally demonstrated in this paper. Plastic optical fiber (POF) is used to connect different cells, then the uplink and downlink between AP and end-user in the same cell are based on near-infrared (NIR) vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL) array and micro-light-emitting-diode (micro-LED) respectively. The real-time performance evaluation is based on simple on-off keying (OOK) modulation format. All the single links in the network can provide communication data rates above 2 Giga-bites per second (Gbps) and the dual-hop link between access point (AP) to end-users from other cells can reach 1.3 Gbps. The results showed that the proposed system represents a viable concept to offer full-duplex communication to future in-home networks.