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Free-space-optical mobile ad hoc networks: Auto-configurable building blocks

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Abstract

Existence of line of sight (LOS) and alignment between the communicating antennas is one of the key requirements for free-space-optical (FSO) communication. To ensure uninterrupted data flow, auto-aligning transmitter and receiver modules are necessary. We propose a new FSO node design that uses spherical surfaces covered with transmitter and receiver modules for maintaining optical links even when nodes are in relative motion. The spherical FSO node provides angular diversity in 3-dimensions, and hence provides an LOS at any orientation as long as there are no obstacles in between the communicating nodes. For proof-of-concept, we designed and tested an auto-configurable circuit, integrated with light sources and detectors placed on spherical surfaces. We demonstrated communication between a stationary and a mobile node using these initial prototypes of such FSO structures. We also performed the necessary theoretical analysis to demonstrate scalability of our FSO node designs to longer distances as well as feasibility of denser packaging of transceivers on such nodes.

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Notes

  1. Our divergence angle definition refers to the half angle from the axis of light propagation.

  2. We assume the divergence angle the transmitter and field of view the receiver in a transceiver to be equivalent.

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Acknowledgment

Authors would like to thank Mr. Chang Liu, Mr. Chingpo Chen, and Mr. David Partyka for thoughtful suggestions during various phases of this work. Authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments which greatly helped in improving this paper. This work is funded by NSF grant number NSF-STI 0230787.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CSE Department, University of Nevada – Reno, MS 171, 1664 N. Virginia Street, Reno, NV, 89557, USA

    Murat Yuksel

  2. ECSE Department, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, JEC 6049, 110 8th Street, Troy, NY, 12180, USA

    Jayasri Akella, Shivkumar Kalyanaraman & Partha Dutta

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  1. Murat Yuksel
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  2. Jayasri Akella
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Correspondence to Murat Yuksel.

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Yuksel, M., Akella, J., Kalyanaraman, S. et al. Free-space-optical mobile ad hoc networks: Auto-configurable building blocks. Wireless Netw 15, 295–312 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11276-007-0040-y

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