Short Courses

This course offers a comprehensive introduction to optical wireless communications. The curriculum delineates a taxonomy for optical wireless systems and elaborates on the core distinctions between Free-Space Optical (FSO) outdoor point-to-point data links and the emerging field of optical wireless mobile multiuser communications.
The course delves into essential technologies and inherent limitations, such as the conservation of étendue, optical passband shift and eye safety considerations. Participants will gain insights into key system components like optical sources, detectors including photovoltaic cells, and imaging and non-imaging optics, as well as physical layer technologies including angular diversity receivers, multicarrier and spatial modulation and wavelength division multiplexing (WDM). The course also covers multiuser access, multi-beam transmission systems, and co-channel interference management, emphasizing their role as foundational elements for various optical wireless systems. The course will also showcase the capability of optical wireless networks as indoor location and position sensors.
Additionally, the course introduces Optical Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS) as an innovative approach to enhance indoor coverage and improve link resilience against random obstructions. The program concludes with an overview of the recently released IEEE 802.11bb LiFi standard, key applications providing a glimpse into the future of optical wireless communications in the context of the emerging 6G standard.

This course should enable participants to:

• engineer an eye-safe, high-speed optical transceiver for scalable point-to-point and dense multi-user optical wireless networks
• analyze trade-offs in optical transceiver design parameters - conduct a comprehensive evaluation of bandwidth, field-of-view (FoV), and size requirements, elucidating the trade-offs involved in optimizing optical transceiver performance.
• evaluate modulation techniques for optimal performance metrics - focusing on energy efficiency, spectral efficiency, and implementation complexity.
• quantify signal-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) and system capacity in multi-access point indoor environments
• strategize solutions for overcoming line-of-sight obstructions
• assess practical implications of Optical Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RISs)
• elucidate core OWC features for indoor user and asset localization
• summarize key aspects of IEEE 802.11bb standard

• Telecommunication Engineers
• Researchers in Optical and Wireless Communications
• Industry Professionals
• Graduate Students

Professor Harald Haas FIEEE, FREng, FRSE, FIET received his PhD degree from The University of Edinburgh in 2001. He is a Distinguished Professor of Mobile Communications at the University of Strathclyde/Glasgow and the Director of the LiFi Research and Development Centre (LRDC). Prof Haas is a founder of pureLiFi Ltd. He has delivered OFC Short Course between 2017 and 2019 as well as IEEE ComSoc lectures between 2017 and 2021.