Optical Wireless

An Overview

Chintan Shah cmshah@cse.buffalo.edu December 9, 2004

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Outline

Introduction

What is Optical Wireless? Applications

Transmitter and Receiver Topologies Challenges and Limitations Topology Control and Routing Conclusion
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What is Optical Wireless?

Optical Wireless a.k.a. Free Space Optics (FSO) refers to the transmission of modulated light beams through the atmosphere to obtain broadband communication Line-of-sight technology Uses lasers/LEDs to generate coherent light beams
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What is Optical Wireless?

Data rates of up to 2.5 Gbps at distances of up to 4km available in commercial products

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Last Mile problem

Connecting the user directly to the backbone high speed fiber optic network is known as the Last Mile problem FSO as the low cost bridging technology

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More Applications

Allows quick Metro network extensions Interconnecting local-area network segments spread across separate buildings (Enterprise connectivity) Fiber backup Interconnecting base stations in cellular systems
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Transmitter

FSO uses the same transmitter technology as used by Fiber Optics Laser/LED as coherent light source Wavelengths centered around 850nm and 1550nm widely used Telescope and lens for aiming light beam to the receiver
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Safety while using Lasers

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Eye Safety

Classifies light sources depending on the amount of power they emit

650 nm (visible) Class 1 Up to 0.2 mW 880 nm (infrared) Up to 0.5 mW 1310 nm (infrared) Up to 8.8 mW 1550 nm (infrared) Up to 10 mW

Class 2
Class 3A Class 3B

0.2-1 mW
1-5 mW 5-500 mW

N/A
0.5-2.5 mW 2.5-500 mW

N/A
8.8-45 mW 45-500 mW

N/A
10-50 mW 50-500 mW

Table1: Laser safety classification for point-source emitter

Class 1 eye safety requirement for lasers used indoors

Array of LEDs are used 1550 nm lasers are generally chosen for this purpose
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Class 3B eye safety requirement for laser used outdoors

Receiver

Photodiode with large active area Narrowband infrared filters to reduce noise due to ambient light Receivers with high gain Bootstrap receivers using PIN diode and avalanche photodiode (APD) used

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Simplified Transceiver Diagram

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Point-to-Multipoint Topology

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Point-to-Point Topology

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Ring with Spurs Topology

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Mesh Topology

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Typical Topology in a Metro

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Challenges

Physical Obstruction Atmospheric Losses

Free space loss Clear air absorption Weather conditions (Fog, rain, snow, etc.) Scattering Scintillation

Building Sway and Seismic activity

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Physical Obstruction

Construction crane or flying bird comes in path of light beam temporarily

Solution: Receiver can recognize temporary loss of connection In packet-switched networks such shortduration interruptions can be handled by higher layers using packet retransmission
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Free space loss

Proportion of transmitted power arriving at the receiver Occurs due to slightly diverging beam

Solution: High receiver gain and large receiver aperture Accurate pointing

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Clear Air Absorption

Equivalent to absorption loss in optical fibers Wavelength dependent Low-loss at wavelengths ~850nm, ~1300nm and ~1550nm Hence these wavelengths are used for transmission

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Weather Conditions

Adverse atmospheric conditions increase Bit Error Rate (BER) of an FSO system Fog causes maximum attenuation Water droplets in fog modify light characteristics or completely hinder the passage of light Attenuation due to fog is known as Mie scattering

Solution: Increasing transmitter power to maximum allowable Shorten link length to be between 200-500m
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Scattering
Caused by collision of wavelength with particles in atmosphere Causes deviation of light beam Less power at receiver Significant for long range communication

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Scintillation

Caused due to different refractive indices of small air pockets at different temperatures along beam path Air pockets act as prisms and lenses causing refraction of beam Optical signal scatters preferentially by small angles in the direction of propagation Distorts the wavefront of received optical signal causing image dancing Best observed by the simmering of horizon on a hot day

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Scintillation (cont)
Solution: Large receiver diameter to cope with image dancing Spatial diversity: Sending same information from several laser transmitters mounted in same housing Not significant for links < 200m apart, so shorten link length
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Building Sway and Seismic activity

Movements of buildings upsets transmitter-receiver alignment

Solution: Use slightly divergent beam

Active tracking

Divergence of 3-6 milliradians will have diameter of 3-6 m after traveling 1km Low cost
Feedback mechanism to continuously align transmitterreceiver lenses Facilitates accelerated installation, but expensive
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Empirical Design Principles

Use lasers ~850 nm for short distances and ~1550 nm for long distance communication with maximum allowable power Slightly divergent beam Large receiver aperture Link length between 200-1000m in case of adverse weather conditions Use multi-beam system
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Limitations of FSO Technology

Requires line-of-sight Limited range (max ~8km) Unreliable bandwidth availability

BER depends on weather conditions

Accurate alignment of transmitterreceiver necessary

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Topology Control and Routing

Given:

Virtual topology: List of backbone nodes and

potential links, Directed Graph G = (V, E) Number of interfaces a node can have Traffic profile of aggregate traffic demands between different source destination pairs

Required:

Optimal topology for maximizing the throughput from the traffic profile, i.e. subgraph G = (V, E) so that interface and capacity constraints are met and network has maximum throughput
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Solution Strategy

The algorithm consists of two parts:

Offline phase

It computes the sub-graph Gives the routes and bandwidth reservation for every ingress-egress pair in the traffic profile Uses the topology computed in offline phase to exercise admission control Routes individual flows
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Online phase

Solution Strategy (cont)

Task of finding sub-graph that will maximize throughput while restricting degree of each vertex is computationally prohibitive Hence, Rollout algorithm is used to obtain near optimal solution The order in which the traffic demands are considered for link formation decides the throughput of the system

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Basic Rollout Algorithm

General method for obtaining an improved policy for a Markov decision process starting with a base heuristic policy One step look ahead policy, with the optimal cost-to-go approximated by the cost-to-go of the base policy
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Basic Rollout Algorithm (Math)

Consider problem: Maximize G(u) over set of feasible solutions U and each solution consist of N components u = (u1, u2, , uN) The base-heuristic algorithm (H) extends a partial solution (u1, u2, , uk), (k < N) to a complete solution (u1, u2, , uN)
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Basic Rollout Algorithm (Math)

Thus, H(u1, u2, , uk) = G (u1, u2, , uN ) The rollout algorithm (R) takes a partial solution (u1, u2, , un-1) and extends it by one component. Thus, R(u1, u2, , un-1) = (u1, u2, , un) where un is chosen so as to maximize H(u1, u2, , un)
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Path Computation

Find k paths for each entry in traffic profile i = 0, d0 = 0, d = aggregate demand for this ingress-egress pair Repeat following until we cannot find a path or whole demand is routed or i = k

Find a path using constrained shortest path first (CSPF) that accommodates (d-di)/(k-i), bandwidth and finalize links temporarily Constraints are limited transmitter-receiver interfaces and limited link capacity Route as much bandwidth of this demand on this route, call it di+1, Decrement link capacity by di+1, and i = i + 1

This algorithm routes whatever we can on these paths

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Base Heuristic

Partial topology by routing demands (t1,,tn) is formed The base heuristic routes the remaining demands in decreasing order of magnitude

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Index Rollout Algorithm

Suppose demands (t1,,tn) have been routed For all possible next candidate demands, throughput is calculated using base heuristic tn+1 is chosen as the one that produces maximum throughput when base heuristic is used to route remaining demands
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Comments

Let:

Computational Complexity:

N = # of nodes M = # of communicating ingress-egress pairs k = # of paths calculated for each communicating pair
Offline phase: O(kM3N2), for constant number of communicating ingress-egress nodes Online phase: O(k)

The base heuristic is such that the rollout works at least as good as the heuristic
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Conclusion

This presentation gave an overview of Optical Wireless technology We started with applications of FSO to provide motivation for its study Transmitter and receiver designs were discussed We looked at the challenges faced by this technology and techniques to deal with them Finally had a brief look at the problem of Topology Control and routing of Bandwidth Guaranteed flows

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References

D.J.T.Heatley, D.R.Wisely, I.Neild and P.Cochrane, Optical wireless: The story so far, IEEE Communications Magazine 36(12) (1998) 72-82 H.A.Willebrand and B.S.Ghuman, Fiber Optics Without Fiber, IEEE Spectrum Magazine, August 2001, pp 40-45. A.Kashyap, M.K.Khandani, K.Lee, M.Shayman, Profile-Based Topology Control and Routing of Bandwidth-Guaranteed Flows in Wireless Optical Backbone Networks, University of Maryland http://www.freespaceoptics.org/ http://http://www.fsona.com/

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