Optical wireless front-end receiver design

Optical wireless or Free Space Optics (FSO) has received considerable attention as an alternative to existing Radio Frequency (RF) communication system. This is due to the growing demand for wireless broadband communications and congestion on bandwidth of RF spectrum. In optical wireless application, the performance of the receiver is significantly determines the overall performance of optical wireless link. Receiver is required to have large aperture. Accordingly, the detector is required to have a large detection area which produces high photodetector capacitance and limits the receiver bandwidth. In this paper, the front-end optical receiver designs especially for wireless application have been focused where a fundamental requirement is the achievement of wide dynamic range and broad bandwidth. Through a review on reported works, the bootstrapping technique is found effectively reduces the photodetector capacitance associated with the large area photodetector. Consequently, the overall bandwidth of the system can be improved.