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Electronics
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Optical Wireless Communications and Networking: A Pathway towards 6G
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Optical Wireless Communications and Networking: A Pathway towards 6G

A special issue of Electronics (ISSN 2079-9292). This special issue belongs to the section "Microwave and Wireless Communications".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 October 2021) | Viewed by 4722

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Imran Shafique Ansari

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
James Watt School of Engineering, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK
Interests: free-space optics (FSO); wireless communications; physical-layer security; device-to-device communications; optical wireless communications; cyber security and resilience
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In recent years, wireless communications have significantly evolved due to the advanced technology of smartphones, portable devices, and the growth of Internet of Things, e-Health, e-Commerce, intelligent transportation systems, and social networking. Optical wireless communications (OWCs) offer many advantages such as free license, wide bandwidth, inherent security, and no interference, and represent a complementary technology to radio frequency technologies, particularly in the emerging 5G-based wireless communication networks and beyond. The widespread deployment of OWC systems, namely infrared, visible light communications (VLC), and free-space optical (FSO) communications, is facing a number challenges, such as safety regulation, device performance, compatibility with existing systems, the killer application, and complexity. Moreover, in the last decade we have seen a growing trend in research and development activities in the emerging field of OWC, covering VLC and FSO, including underwater communications and applications in healthcare and the oil and gas industry—thus the ongoing need for more research and development to address the above and beyond.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Airborne FSO systems (e.g., UAV, aircraft, satellite);
  • Chip-scale optical communications;
  • Coding, modulation, and signal processing for optical systems;
  • Cross-layer design of optical networks;
  • Energy-efficient optical wireless networks;
  • Fiber access networks and optical wireless backhaul;
  • Flexible-grid elastic optical networks;
  • Hybrid millimeter-wave (MMW)/FSO outdoor systems;
  • Hybrid radio frequency (RF)/OWC technology;
  • Integration of VLC with power-line communication (PLC), Ethernet, and WiFi;
  • Industry developments and deployments in optical communications;
  • Intelligent optical control plane;
  • Lasers and photonic components;
  • Lighting-constrained VLCs and networks;
  • Next-generation optical transport systems;
  • Optical camera communication;
  • Optical interconnects for high-performance computing;
  • Optical vehicular networks;
  • Optical wireless modulation and signal processing;
  • Opto-electronics for terabit networking;
  • Protection, restoration, and security in optical networks;
  • Quantum photonic networks;
  • Techno-economic issues in optical networks;
  • Underwater optical communications;
  • WDM optical networks.

Dr. Imran Ansari
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Electronics is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Published Papers (2 papers)

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17 pages, 1112 KiB  
Article
Mixed-Carrier Communication for Technology Division Multiplexing
by Ahmed F. Hussein, Dola Saha and Hany Elgala
Electronics 2021, 10(18), 2248; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics10182248 - 13 Sep 2021
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1734
Abstract
Recently, research on sixth-generation (6G) networks has gained significant interest. 6G is expected to enable a wide-range of applications that fifth-generation (5G) networks will not be able to serve reliably, such as tactile Internet. Additionally, 6G is expected to offer Terabits per second [...] Read more.
Recently, research on sixth-generation (6G) networks has gained significant interest. 6G is expected to enable a wide-range of applications that fifth-generation (5G) networks will not be able to serve reliably, such as tactile Internet. Additionally, 6G is expected to offer Terabits per second (Tbps) data rates, 10 times lower latency, and near 100% coverage, compared to 5G. Thus, 6G is expected to expand across all available spectrums including terahertz (THz) and optical frequency bands. In this manuscript, mixed-carrier communication (MCC) is investigated as a novel physical layer (PHY) design for 6G networks. The proposed MCC version in this study is based on visible light communication (VLC). MCC enables a unified transmission PHY design to connect devices with different complexities, simultaneously. The design trade-offs and the required signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) per individual modulation schemes embedded within MCC are investigated. The complexity analysis shows that a conventional optical OFDM receiver can capture the high-speed bit-stream embedded within MCC. For a forward error correction (FEC) bit-error-rate (BER) threshold of 3.8×10−3, MCC is optimized to maximize the spectral efficiency by embedding 2-beacon phase-shift keying (2-BnPSK) within an MCC envelope on top of 12 bits per beacon position modulation (BPM) symbol. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Optical Wireless Communications and Networking: A Pathway towards 6G)
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Review

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14 pages, 2714 KiB  
Review
Bit Error Performance of APD and SPAD Receivers in Optical Wireless Communication
by Hiwa Mahmoudi and Horst Zimmermann
Electronics 2021, 10(22), 2731; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics10222731 - 09 Nov 2021
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2271
Abstract
This review concentrates on the state-of-the-art hardware-oriented receiver aspects for optical wireless communication (OWC), and points to the importance of BER performance analysis and modeling in presence of non-perpendicular light incidence. Receivers in OWC networks for 6G applications have to work for strongly [...] Read more.
This review concentrates on the state-of-the-art hardware-oriented receiver aspects for optical wireless communication (OWC), and points to the importance of BER performance analysis and modeling in presence of non-perpendicular light incidence. Receivers in OWC networks for 6G applications have to work for strongly different light incidence angles, to allow the formation of connections to locally separated transceivers without the need for rotation units and accurate adjustment. In turn, and in combination with fully integrated optical receivers, reduction of cost and increased comfort can be achieved. Fully integrated [bipolar] complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor ([Bi]CMOS) receivers with on-chip avalanche photodiodes (APDs) and single-photon avalanche diodes (SPADs) are presented and their performance in optical wireless communication is summarized. Impressive data rates up to 2 Gbit/s and free-space transmission distances up to 27 m at bit error ratios (BER) below 10−9 are reached with linear-mode APD receivers. The importance of optical interference in the isolation and passivation stack on top of the integrated photodiodes is illuminated. To be able to predict the dependence of the BER of single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) receivers on the light incidence angle, a model, which includes a model for the photon detection probability and a standing-wave model for the isolation and passivation stack, is extended. The dependence of the BER on the light incidence angle onto the photodiodes is investigated by electromagnetic simulation for optical transmission of the layers on top of the photodiode, device simulation for the avalanche triggering probability and BER modeling with MATLAB. It is found that incidence angles up to 30° have moderate influence on the BER and that the BER degrades significantly for incidence angles larger than 50°. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Optical Wireless Communications and Networking: A Pathway towards 6G)
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