Automatic realignment with electronic steering of free-space-optical transceivers in MANETs: A proof-of-concept prototype

Free-Space-Optical (FSO) communication has the potential to achieve very high wireless communication rates at tens of GHz. Although it has the advantage of high-speed optical modulation, FSO communication is prone to mobility and it requires establishment and maintenance of line-of-sight (LOS) between FSO transceivers since FSO transceivers are highly directional. We consider FSO structures with multiple transceivers placed on a spherical shape with angular diversity and tackle the problem of automatically detecting and maintaining LOS alignment among neighbor multi-transceiver FSO structures. We present a prototype implementation of such multi-transceiver electronically-steered communication structures. Our prototype uses a simple LOS detection and establishment protocol and assigns logical data streams to appropriate physical links. We show that by using multiple directional transceivers and an auto-alignment mechanism, it is possible to maintain optical wireless links in a mobile setting with minimal disruptions and overhead. 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.