0968650 Pennsylvania State University; Mohsen Kavehrad 0968651 Tufts University; Valencia Joyner 0968662 University of California-Riverside; Zhengyuan Xu
The Center for Optical Wireless Applications (COWA) will focus on developing new devices using White Light Emitting Devices (WLEDs). Pennsylvania State University (PSU), Tufts University (TU) and the University of California-Riverside (UCR) are collaborating to establish the proposed center, with PSU as the lead institution.
The primary goals of this planning project are to initiate formal partnership with various industry partners and national laboratories that have an interest in optical wireless applications designs, and to discuss fundamental issues and topics for research. The main objective of the envisioned research projects at the proposed Center is to develop a new generation of environment-friendly extremely wideband optical wireless technology applications. The PIs' effort will involve work in relevant device designs, in optical wireless communication systems (physical layer), in networking, sensing, and in imaging.
The proposed Center has the potential to improve the profitability of US manufacturing by developing new optical wireless devices that will improve communication systems, reduce energy consumption and pollution. The proposed Center will offer a series of short courses to update the knowledge of the current workforce and will help universities to tailor new course offerings and to modify existing course offerings to better provide instruction for related areas and industry needs. The Center plans to promote diversity, building on all three universities' high ranking in education of minorities. In addition, the Center will work with existing university resources to recruit and build strong relationships with minority and women-owned companies and provide a collaborative community, within which these companies can contribute expertise, expand their networks and become more globally competitive.
Recent breakthroughs in solid-state lighting technology has opened the door to a myriad of applications using light-emitting diodes for both illumination and optical wireless networking. This workshop provided a forum for leading industry professionals and researchers to discuss the potentials to establish an interdisciplinary research Center, providing leadership to develop a new generation of environment-friendly (GREEN), extremely wideband optical wireless technology applications, employing solid-state devices for communications, networking, imaging and remote sensing applications. As LED’s increasingly displace incandescent lighting over the next few years, general applications of VLC technology are expected to include wireless Internet access, vehicle to vehicle communications, broadcast from LED signage, machine to machine communications etc. ?The VLC technology also has potential in a number of specialized application areas including the following: *Hospital & Healthcare – enabling mobility and data communications in hospitals. *Hazardous Environments – enabling data communications in environments where RF is potentially dangerous (such as Oil & Gas, Petrochemicals and Mining) *Commercial Aviation – enabling wireless data communications such as in flight entertainment and personal communications *Corporate and Organizational Security – enabling the use of Wireless Networks in applications where WiFi presents a security risk * WiFi Spectrum Relief – providing additional bandwidth in environments where unlicensed communication bands are congested * Green Computing – greater energy efficiency * Defense & Military Applications – enabling high data rate wireless communications within military vehicles and aircraft * Underwater communications – between divers and/or remote operated vehicles. Progress in semiconductor technology has facilitated production of efficient light sources including LEDs, lasers, white LEDs, etc. These can operate over wide visible light (VL), infrared (IR) and ultra-violet (UV) ranges. Replacement of conventional light bulbs with lighting VL-LEDs will result in great savings of energy, reaching 1.9×1020 Joules in 10 years. Light sources, can harness the potential of the LEDs by offering controllability that will enhance their functionality and performance in a wide range of applications; including imaging, communications, networking and navigation. Optical wireless utilizes optical carrier to convey data through media distinct from radio frequency (RF) counterparts as they occupy many orders of magnitude wider unlicensed spectrum, offering potential in wideband transmission with enhanced security and immunity to RF interference. Free-space and underwater optical links, indoor IR/VL links are aspects of optical wireless communication capabilities, that will provide network access, helping to create a 3D communication grid by connecting underwater, ground, airplanes and satellites. Also, remote sensing, imaging and spectroscopy would be direct beneficiaries of the highly-efficient, durable components and license-free optical bands. For such applications to reach maturity, integration among monolithic system-on-chip hardware, design, optimization, experimentation and performance analysis techniques unique to photonic components must be performed. To this end, 3 research thrust teams have been defined: 1. Imaging/Remote Sensing 2. Communication/Networking/Navigation 3. Integrated Opto-Electronic Devices The intellectual merit of the proposed Center is based on the integration of interdisciplinary expertise at Pennsylvania State University, University of California - Riverside and Tufts University with devices and systems-based engineering design and networking concepts. The team will pursue the following objectives: generate technology that enables manufacturing specific devices of larger communications capacity and will employ integrated opto-electronics device design with interfaces necessary to facilitate collaborative device and system designs and generate practical transceiver technology able to provide high capacity for communication systems. This includes devices for: a) user-network interface; b) network-to-network interface for selected combinations of network pairing, address some crucial open questions related to networking of this technology, development of advanced navigation technology and development of sensing and imaging technology. The broader impacts of the proposed Center will include ground-breaking efforts to instill the cultural paradigm shift associated with viewing the energy-saving LEDs as an integral part of the system design process. The proposed Center will offer a series of short courses to update the knowledge of the current workforce and will help universities to tailor new course offerings and to modify existing course offerings to better provide instruction for related areas and industry needs. Currently, there are many established research centers around USA for investigating applications of RF techniques, but there is none for promoting similar techniques using optical wireless. Having such a center will enable research impacting homeland security, health-care networks, structure-health monitoring sensor networks; ad-hoc networks, etc., in the long-term, and also will enable training engineers in such a multi-disciplinary field. The Center will make every effort to promote diversity, building on all three universities’ high ranking in education of minorities and harnessing strengths at these institutions aimed at inclusion of women. In addition, the Center will work with existing university resources to recruit and build strong relationships with minority and women-owned companies and provide a collaborative community, within which these companies can contribute expertise, expand their networks and become more globally competitive.
