Free Space and Underwater Visible Light Communications: An Emerging Technology for Industry 4.0

15 May 2020 10:00 - 11:00

Eastern Time (US & Canada) (UTC -05:00)

The unregulated visible light spectrum has recently been harnessed for energy-efficient, ultra-large bandwidth, and secure data transmission. Besides the potential for achieving high data rate free-space communication links, i.e. the Li-Fi network, laser-based visible light communication (VLC) technology also enables underwater wireless optical communications (UWOC) for many important industrial applications. This presentation will provide an overview of the free-space and underwater VLC technologies and their impact to industry 4.0, with a focused discussion on the device technology. Apart from the utilization of discrete components for building a VLC system, the development of III-nitride photonic integration has been featured. Such on-chip integration offers many advantages, including having a small-footprint, high-speed, and low power consumption. Finally, I’ll discuss the advances and challenges in practical deployment of VLC and UWOC systems and how to bridge the gap between academic research and industrial applications.