The Design and Analyes of Wireless Laser

Communication System
Li Tianze, Wang Shuyun
School of Electric and Electronic Engineering
Shandong University of Technology
Shandong Zibo 255049,China
e-mail：ltzwang@163.com

Abstract—Wireless laser communication(WLC) is a point-point
communication with laser as its carrier.This article first
expounds the working theory of WLC system and some main
aspects resricting this system,then designs a WLC system on this
base.We discuss the choices of the system communication wave
lengths,the design of the emitting system,optical antenna ,and
receiving system,as well as the key technology in wireless laser
communication.We analyse the relating problems such as signal
detecting,the optimum parameters and so on,look forward to the
application and foreground of WLC system at last.
Keywords-wireless laser communication; transceiver system;
optical antenna;atmospheric random channel
I. INTRODUCTION
Wireless laser communication,called free space optical
communicationas well,is a kind of new communication
technologies with free space or air as its transfering medium in
which the carrier wave transfers the effective information to
realize the communication.Wireless laser communication has
the convenience of the radio communication as well as the
major advantages of fiber communication,especially has the
character of big communicating vocume comparing with the
traditional communicating ways,it has mang advantages such
as high transfering speed ,fine light beam direction ,high
privacy, without the allowance of radio frequency usage,not
influencing the municipal construction,low cost,wide
communication frequency band.Especially because laser has
the high direction,thin emitting light beam,and enables to
transfer quite a lot of data in the short time,it has the short
communication time ,high privacy and interference immunity
and can prevent from being wiretapped and detected effectively
etc, laser has a wide application in civil and military fields,and
becomes a new communication technology with the high
competetive ability.
II. WIRELESS LASER COMMUNICATION SYSTEM
them into the light modulator,modulate to a laser beam
generated by laser,so these inforination carried by laser carrier
wave is sent out by the emitting antenna after information
processing.At the receiving end,the modulated laser signal is
input into the light detector to get electric signal and process to
resume the original information via signal-conversion
equipment.
APT optical Spectro optical
system emitting scope receiving
antenna antenna
filter
modulator
Photoelectricity detector
Dispose of information
laser Signal
source
Export of incept information
Figure. 1 Wireless laser communication system
B. The Design of the Emitting System
According to wireless laser commication’s working theory
and its channel characteristics,wireless laser system has the
very high requirements for the adopted laser light source, that
is mainly embodied as the following aspects:First the hig
power second the wave length of laser light source must be in
the air window,third the high requirements for the adjusting
frequency.We use the mature technology of fiber
communication system to design the emitting part,adopt the
semiconductor laser which makes the emitting part a high light
power to realize the signal light’s plus.We further optimize the
multi-wavelength wireless laser communication system by
adopting raster, improve the reception of the system by the
simple wave length-Division multiplexer.

A. The Theory of Wireless Laser Communication System
WLC system mainly consists of emitting and receiving
systems.Its theory is shown in Figure 1.The emitting part is
mainly made up with laser,modulator,signal source and optical
emitting antenna.while the receiving part is mainly composed
of electric signal processor, optical receiving antenna,
photoelectric detector and so on. Its working process it:change
the to-be-sent information source into electric signals and input
C. The Design of the Optical Antenna
The optical antenna used in wireless laser communication
has two kinds:One is the transmitive antenna,the other is
reflective antenna.The transmitive antennas are main Galileo
telescope system and Kepler telescope system.Its advantage is
to make simply while its disadvantage is the caliber can’t be
big. because of the manufacturing engineering restrict.The
reflective antennas are main Newton system Gregory.System

978-1-4244-3693-4/09/$25.00 ©2009 IEEE

and Carse Green system. Its advantage is big caliber ,light
weight,it makes the reflector’s influence on optical path
double, so the requirement of reflective surface’s processing
accuracy is uch higher than that of refractive
surface.Deformation has high influence on picture element.
We can design the optical emitting and receiving antennas
with different requirements according to wireless laser
communication’s characteristics.
The requirements of the optical emitting:the function of
the optical emitting antenna is to compress the light beam
divergence angle and collimate diverged light
beams.Generally speaking, the light beam’s divergence angle
output from somiconductor laser light source is several
degrees to do tens of degrees.The divergence angle can be
come 0.25-3mrad after being collimated by the emitting
antenna to increase its transporting distance in the air
effectively.
The requirements of the optical receiving antenna: the
optical receiving antenna is the core of receiver,its function is
to receive the weak laser signals,focus and couple the incident
light to the light detector so as to increase the detector’s
effective receiving arca. The receiver can be described by the
effective receiving area and viewing field.The receiving area
is the collecting area of the incident field and is also the lens’
physical area under the perfect circumstance. Considering
receiver’s loss ,the effective receiving area is smaller than the
real area.The receiving antennas are the separate arriving
direction fields of Hertzian wave which can be observed by
the light detector. The noise and multiway divergence in
optical antenna’s transfering environment can damage its
receiving sensitivity seriously,but these phenomena have a
little influence on PPM mode’s receiving sensitivity,so the
modulation mode usually adopts PPM. Otherwise ,the
receiving antenna’s space should be big enough in the air laser
communication as the bigger caliber of the receiving
antenna,its plus will be bigger.
D. The Design of The Receiving System
Light receiver’s task is to resume the light carrier wave’s
carrying information with the minimal added noise and
distortion,so the light receiver’s outputing characters reflecting
the whole fiber communication system’s performance.
Synthetically.
WLC’s receiving system is mainly composed of light
detector and light signal processing unit.It’s required that the
detector have a quite high sensitivity because laser’s light
intensity is very weak in the air besides the geometrical loss
aspect and so on photoelectric detector is the key component
of the air laser communication receiving system. The weak
signal current detected and got by the photoelctric detector is
changed into the voltage signals after the load resistance,then
it is amplified by the preamplifier.But when the preamplifier
amplifies the signals,it also bring in the resistence thermal
noise of itself and transister’s scattering noise. Besides this,the
latter main amplifier will also anplify the noise generated by
the preamplifier together when amplifying the preamplifier’s
output signals.The preamplifier’s performance has very
important influence on the receiver’s sensitivity.So the
preamplifier must be the low-noise,wide-frequency band
amplifier. In the view of improving the wireless laser
communication system’s performance it is much more
effective to improve the photoelectric detector’s influence on
received signal’ sensitivity than improving the light source’s
emitting power.Therefore,it’s not only much technologically
difficult to improve laser light source’s emitting power
further ,but also will sharply increase the system’s
cost,volume and complexity,and also be very hard to meet the
requirements of human eyes’ security while it will not bring
big influence on the system by improving the light detector’s
sensitivity.
III. THE MAIN FACTOR AND KEY TECHNOLOGIES
RESTRICTING WIRELESS LIGHT COMMUNICATION SYSTEM
In designing the light emitter,we must consider two
questions:one is the aspects affecting the choices of the light
wave’s wave band,the other is the aspects affectingthe
communication distance.No matter in the ground light
communication or space light communication, we must
consider them considerately.
A. The Aspecrs Needed to Be Considered in Choosing The
Communication Wavelength
The key and first of realizing the direct light
communication between satellites is to look for the optimum
optical communication wavelength and within this scope it
requires the low noise high interference immune
ability;especially when the satellites are out of the aerospheric
layer, it is required to eliminate the solar radiation’s disturbace
to the light communication and the influence of global
radiation,air radiation’s absorption on light communication
between satellites.Considering these aspects,we should analyse
solar global and air radiation to find the weakest wave band of
its radical spectrum energy and get the perfect communication
effect. In choosing the space light communication wave band’s
scope,the first which should be considered is the solar
radiation.In order to the communication in the near-sun
direction,we must choose the wave band with the weakest solar
radiation.In the whole radiation from sun to the earth,the
reflectivty of the earth to sun is
R
A= × 100% （1）
Q
In it，A is the reflectivity；R is the whole reflective flux
density ；Q is the whole radiation flux density.The ground
reflecting wavelength depends on the air’s absorption into solar
radiation.Because the solar radiation with wavelength smaller
than 0.31μm which takes 2% of the whole solar radiation
energy in incideit air is absolutely absorbed when it enters the
air to the 30km place above the ground, so the solar radiation
with the wavelength smaller than 0.31μm can not reach the
earth and the ground radiation is all the long-wave
radiation.The different lights with separate wavelengths have
difforent transfering charaters in individual circumstances
which leads to the different absorbing windows for them under
individual circumstances. So it needs to find an optimum
wavelength and the combination of the wavelength and
character in communication chains.In the temperature scope
between the groud and the air,more than 95% global radiation
wavelengths are between 3-120μm with the wavelength about
10μm of the maximum radiation intensity if calculated by the
black body.The global radiation is strong enough to filter the
air into the cosmic space near 10.6μm. If this wave band is
used in communication between satellites,it will get the fierce
disturbance from global radiation, so it can’t be carried the
light communication between satellites near 10.6μm.
B. The Analyses of The Aspects Influencing Communication
Distance
We should pay attention to the aspects inflvencing
communication distance in designing the wireless light
communication system.Suppose the emitting antenna’s
radiation power is P when the emitting antenna emits Gauss
light beams.The maximum possible distance of the receiving
antenna is z，the leteral semidiameter of the emitting antenna
is α，so the minimum power received by the antenna is
2 In fact,the most technologies used in wireless laser
⎛ α ⎞
Pr min = ⎜⎜ ⎟⎟ P （2）
⎝ ω ( z) ⎠
1/ 2
⎡P ⎤
α = ω ( z ) ⎢ r min ⎥ （3）
⎣ P ⎦
in it ， ω (z ) is Gauss light beam’s facula semidiameter on
receiving antenna,its value is ω( z) = ω0[1 + λz /(πω0 )]1/ 2 .
The influence of the receiving antenna’s size on
communication distance is shown in Figure 2.
Z×103 /km
40
30
20
10
0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2α/m
Figure.2 The relationship of antenna caliber and
communication distance
By analysing we know that communication distance z
increases nonlinearly with the emitting power P increasing,but
when P increases to a certain value, z increasing tends to
show,that is the influence of increasing power on
communication distance z decreases when the power
increases to a certain value.
With the improvement of sensitivity,communication distance z
tends to increase.After the minimum received power decreases
to a certain value,z sharpiy increases with it.Therefore,to
improve the receiving sensitivity is a way to increase
communication distance.Furthermore,laser beam can creat a
big facular in far field after being collimated by emitting
optical system.If the receiving optical system’scaliber is
smaller than this facula is diameter,the signal light beam will
not be absolutely received by the detector,that is to creat ,the
light beam diffusion loss,thenrestrict communication distance
further.The smaller of its light beam divergence angle,the
longer communication distance will be.
C. The Key Technologies in Wireless Laser Communication
System
Wireless and wideband are two most important
developping directions of communication. Comparing with
radio and fiber communications,wireless laser communication
has many advantages and some unavoidable disadvantages
while this point-point communication technology taking the
air as the channel and laser as medium:one is the transmittance
of laser is very low in the disastrous weather such as rain,fog
and so on;Two is the air’s influence on laser signal’s
attenuation is big;Three is the vibration or trembling of the
platform which will make the communication parts off the
target positions.
communication are about conquing or reducing the influence
of these three aspects and insuring the communication channel
smooth.In order to decrease air’s influence on
communication,the usual ways are:increase the emitting
power,increase the emitting caliber,adopt miuimeter wave
communication as the backup and so on.But in order to realize
to capture 、 correctly and track with high precision,the
capturing、tracking、aiming technologies are more and more
becoming the key technologies in wireless laser
communication.
IV. SIGNAL DETECTING AND THE OPTIMUM
PARAMETER ANALYSES
A. Signal Detecting Analyses
Signal detecting is to change the light field received by
lens to voltage or current signals so as to be disposed by the
subsequent circuit and demodulated the useful information.
The signal light power of the receiving system can be got
by the transfering equation
2
−αL ⎛ dr ⎞
Pr = Ptη tη r e ⎜ ⎟ （4）
⎝ θL ⎠
in it， Pt is the emitting signal light power;η t is the emitting
antennals effiency; η r is the receiving antenna’s effiency; α
is the air attenuation coefficlent; d r is the receiving antenna’s
−α L
is the air channel attenuation; ( d r / θL) is the
2
diameter; e
light power’s geometrical attenuation.Furthermore,considering
the system receiver adopting the direct detecting way,the
detector’s signal output power in stable tracking is
⎛ ηe ⎞ 2
Pc = G 2 I s2 R L = G 2 ⎜ ⎟ Pr RL （5）
⎝ hν ⎠
in it, G is detector’s current plus; I s is signal light current’s
average value; R L is detector’s equivalent load resistance;η is
quantum efficiency; e is electron charge; ν is the incident
light ; h is plancks constant; Pr is the receiving signal light
power.Background noise and thermal noise will influence
receiving sensitivity directly.The receiver’s Signal-to-Noise is
2 relationship with the tracking strategy: This formula’s forms
⎛ ηe ⎞
G 2 Pr2 ⎜ ⎟ RL
S
= ⎝ hν ⎠ （6）
N 2 ⎡⎛ ηe ⎞ ⎤ background noise and detector’s dark current,the theoretical
2eG FΔfRL ⎢⎜ ⎟( Pr + Pb + I d ⎥ + 4kTΔf
⎣⎝ hν ⎠ ⎦
in it, Pb is backlight power; F is noise multiplication
factor; T is detector’s working temperature; k is Boltzmann
constant.
B. The Optimun Parameter’s Analyses
1) Under the circumstance that the thermal noise is
approxmately equivalent to shot noise: we can get the
divergence angle corresponding to Signal-to-Noise maximum
8LϕV
θ= （7）
c important in space communication when the modern war
2) Under the circumstance that shot noise predominates
while neglecting the thormal noise:So
4 LϕV ⎡ 4 LϕV / c ⎤
θ = ⎢1 + 1+ ⎥ （8）
c ⎣ Pr /( Pb + Pd ) ⎦
3）The analyses and explanation
a) The optimum of divergence angle increases with
ϕ 、 V increasing: usually light beam’s divergence angle
should double the maximal tracking error at least when
trackingcape speed is big,the lag error of the system will be
big,and the total tracking error be big,so the wide laser light
beam should be required.
b) The backlight power and dark current class input
power influence the size of the divergence angle
directly:adopting the receiving devices with low dark current
as well as restricting background noise with all kinds of
ways,choosing the receiving viewing field and the suitable
half width filter properly and so on will increase divergence
angle.
c) Reliability is usually required much higher in the real
design: the above gives the theoretical optimum value of light
beam’s divergence angle,in real design we should first get the
optimum divergence angle and calculate the parameters such
as scanning cape speed and so on via it.The real divergence
angle can be choosen a little bigger properly ,which will
decrease some Signal-to-Noise,slightly to assure the reliable
receiving to pulse.
d) The optimmum value got in formula （ 8 ） has
will also have some responding changes with the different
tracking strategies,but this analysing method is still advisable.
From the above analyses;we know that if we decrease the
value of light beam’s divergence angle will increase.
V. APPLICATION AND PROSPECT
Wireless laser communication with wireless and wideband
advantages has been paid much attention to in recent years and
become a new communication hot point.Many domestic and
foreign research institutes and companies put forward the
responding products one after another.Wireless laser
communication system which is a communication system with
a vast applying foreground and big market potential can be
used in data exchangebetween the mobile base stations 、
emergent communication 、 military communication 、
communication between satellites and so on. It is especially
develops three-dimensionally. With the increasing of the
needed communication information year by year and constant
improving technologies,the modulation mode of the future
wireless laser communication system will adopt the direct
modulation.The new modulation technology’s research will
become a very important part in the future wireless laser
communication and get people’s much attention because of its
unique advantages.
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