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Shine a light: Diffuse Optical Wireless Transmission and OFDM

Sarah Kate Wilson

Abstract

For the past ten years, wireless local area networks have operated successfully in the 2.4 GHz band and the 5 GHz bands. Signals from these bands do not confine themselves to a given room or even household, so security and frequency re-use are issues for concern. Alternative frequencies such as 60 GHz or optical wireless links are currently being investigated as alternatives to these leaky lower bands. This talk will give an introduction to some of these transmission methods and then focus on diffuse optical wireless communications. A method that is particularly power efficient and suited to indoor wireless optical data transmission is asymmetrically-clipped optical Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (ACO-OFDM). Some recent results for ACO-OFDM are presented and discussed.

Biography

Sarah Kate Wilson received her A.B. from Bryn Mawr College with honors in Mathematics in 1979 and her Ph.D. from Stanford University in Electrical Engineering in 1994. She has worked in both industry and academia and has been a visiting professor at Lulea University of Technology, the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and Stanford University. She is currently on the faculty of Santa Clara University. She has served as an associate editor for IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, IEEE Communications Letters and IEEE Transactions on Communications. She is now an associate editor for the Journal of Communications and Networks and the editor-in-chief of IEEE Communications Letters.

Sarah Kate Wilson Headshot
Sarah Kate Wilson
Santa Clara University
EEB 105
12 May 2009, 10:30am until 11:30am