Picocellular Hybris Optical/RF Communications System

The ultimate objective of this research is to develop a low cost, high bandwidth, quickly deployable communications system. The system relies on 10-20 Mbps RF communications within a 100 m diameter cell size. The cells are interconnected with 622, Mbps optical crosslinks. The critical technology in making these cross links feasible with low installation cost is that they be self-aligning. In this Phase I SBIR we will demonstrate that we can design and build a self-aligning, reliable, all weather 100 m optical crosslink at low cost. In order to make the links self-aligning we will use a high peak power, low duty cycle infrared pulsed diode laser for a beacon signal. The detection will be performed with a simple quad cell tracker. Investigations of the optimal scanning algorithms will be performed. In addition, since the beacon laser is pulsed, range information for each base station node can be determined. We will investigate using this information along with encoder angle pointing information to permit very rapid alignment of new base station nodes into an existing mesh of base stations.