Performance of coherent detection in optical wireless systems for high speed indoor communications

At a time of dramatically increasing bandwidth demand, the choice of the broadband technology adapted to future indoor applications, deserves serious consideration in the near term. Optical wireless technology goes beyond the capabilities of conventional radio communication systems and presents a realistic supplement to its counterpart. In this paper, a high-speed optical wireless communication system based on coherent reception technology is studied. Our analysis includes laser phase noise which, to the extent of our knowledge, has not been adequately addressed in the literature in the field of optical wireless. We also consider the influence of multipath-induced distortion. Our results indicate that coherent detection may significantly alleviate the power budget of line-of-sight and non-line-of-sight configurations. It can enable Gb/s wireless data transmission under moderate transmission powers consistent with eye safety regulations and the operational properties of optical transmitters typically found in the commercial marketplace.