Abstract: Optical wireless communication (OWC) is a powerful answer to solve the imminent congestion of radio wireless networks. By using narrow infrared beams, it can offer ultra-high capacity to users individually, at high user density, with enhanced privacy and reduced energy consumption. After outlining the basic concepts of OWC, we will zoom in on key technologies for beam steering, user localization, and wide field-of-view free-space optical receivers. Laboratory system experiments will be presented, and an outlook will be given on application domains.
Biography: Ton Koonen is Full Professor at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), Eindhoven, The Netherlands, since 2001. Since 2004, he is the Chairman of the group Electro-Optical Communication Systems and from 2012 to 2020, he was Vice-Dean of the Department Electrical Engineering. From 2016 to 2019, he was also the Scientific Director of the Institute for Photonic Integration with TU/e. Before 2001, he worked for more than 20 years in applied research in industry, Bell Labs—Lucent Technologies being one of them. He is a Bell Labs Fellow (1998), IEEE Fellow (2007), OSA Fellow (2013), and Distinguished Guest Professor of Hunan University, Changsha, China (2014). In 2012, he received the prestigious Advanced Investigator Grant of the European Research Council on optical wireless communication. His current research interests are optical in-building networks (including optical wireless communication techniques, radio-over-fiber techniques, and high-capacity plastic optical fiber techniques), optical access networks, and spatial division multiplexed systems.
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