Optical Wireless for Industrial Communication: Practical Results Using IEEE Std 802.15.13: (Invited Paper)

We present recent work on a proof-of-concept of cell-free distributed multiple-input multiple-output (D-MIMO) based on the new IEEE 802.15.13 standard for optical wireless communication in industrial applications. The design includes a coordinator with multiple distributed optical frontends (OFEs) in a multiple-input single-output (MISO) configuration, as well as mobile devices. The coordinator is realized as a virtual network function, running on commodity server hardware. It controls the transmission of all distributed OFEs via a digital packet-switched fronthaul network. One or more distributed OFEs are dynamically combined to form a virtual cell for each mobile user. In this way, macro-diversity is provided to ensure robust low-latency transmission: If the line-of-sight to one OFE is blocked, the link is maintained via another one. We provide first performance results based on our field programmable gate array (FPGA) implementation of the Pulsed Modulation PHY (PM-PHY) specified in the standard. It supports on-off-keying (OOK) modulation with frequency-domain equalization at four selectable clock rates.