A Bidirectional Wavelength Division Multiplexed (WDM) Free Space Optical Communication (FSO) System for Deployment in...

Area of Science:

• Optical Communications
• Data Center Networking
• Wireless Technology

Background:

• Data centers are essential for cloud computing growth.
• Next-generation data center networks increasingly depend on optical technologies.
• Fiber-based interconnects face limitations in scalability and deployment.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate a bidirectional wavelength-division-multiplexed (WDM) free space optical communication (FSO) system.
• To evaluate its suitability for optical wireless data center networks (DCNs).
• To assess high-speed bidirectional data transmission capabilities.

Main Methods:

• System evaluation using symmetric 10 Gbps 16-quadrature amplitude modulation (16-QAM) intensity-modulated orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) for downstream signals.
• Utilizing 10 Gbps on-off keying (OOK) for upstream signals.
• Modeling optical signal transmission over an FSO link using a gamma-gamma channel model.

Main Results:

• Demonstrated bidirectional WDM-FSO transmission.
• Achieved a total data rate of 320 Gbps over a 1000 m free space transmission length.
• Bit error rate (BER) analysis confirmed signal integrity for WDM signals.

Conclusions:

• The proposed bidirectional WDM-FSO system is a viable alternative to fiber-based optical interconnects in DCNs.
• It enables high data rate bidirectional transmission in optical wireless DCNs.
• FSO technology offers a promising solution for future data center network infrastructure.