Connectivity Issues for Optical Wireless Networks

Optical Wireless Communications (OWC) networks are becoming more and more popular for delivering broadband traffic since they are introducing significant advantages against the other alternative technologies. Operating wavelengths range from ultraviolet (UV) to the infrared (IR) portion of the electromagnetic spectrum and present significant attenuation from channel impairments. As a result, the transmission range is significantly reduced when a single hop is used. Therefore, multi-hop operation, which is a common technique in wireless radiofrequency (RF) communication systems, is adopted in order to increase the effective distance between transmitter and receiver. To improve their reliability connectivity issues need to be investigated. Connectivity has been investigated in RF ad hoc networks (either one or two dimension) in contrast with OWC networks. The present dissertation aims to examine this research area by connecting the minimum transmission range ensuring connectivity with a plethora of parameters such as the adopted modulation and/or coding format, the transmitted power, the supported data rate and the error probability. Analytical expressions are extracted and the derived results are depicted using appropriate figures. The outcomes constitute a valuable tool to design such networks in practice.