Advanced Studies on Optical Wireless Communications for in-Pipe Environments: Bandwidth Exploration and Thermal Management

This study presents insights into high-speed optical wireless communication (OWC) within plastic pipes, introducing a Gbps-capable alternative for challenging environments. Utilizing a 1W LED with five wavelengths, the experiment explores signal power, attenuation, and bandwidth characteristics. Notably, the blue LED achieves an unprecedented 58.64 MHz bandwidth, red and purple LEDs demonstrate novel bandwidths of approximately 25.23 MHz, and green and yellow LEDs exhibit unique bandwidths of 23.75 MHz and 9.62 MHz, respectively. The attenuation parameters for different wavelengths provide numerous insights, showcasing the novelty of this research and its potential applications in robot communication within plastic pipes. Concurrently, the paper introduces an approach to address the temperature impact on five distinct wavelength LEDs in OWC. By focusing on variations in LED bandwidth and optical power, an optimal heat sink design is proposed. This design achieves a remarkable minimum temperature of 27.06°C and reduces the chip LED device’s response time from 15 to 9 seconds. The significance lies in the novelty of the proposed heat sink, which incorporates variables such as fin thickness, height, air gap width, number of fins, and airflow rate, marking a substantial advancement in thermal management for OWC systems.