Beacon-enabled TDMA Ultraviolet Communication Network System Design and Realization

Abstract: Nonline of sight (NLOS) ultraviolet (UV) scattering communication can serve as a good candidate for outdoor optical wireless communication (OWC) in the cases of non-perfect transmitter-receiver alignment and radio silence. We design and demonstrate a NLOS UV scattering communication network system in this paper, where a beacon-enabled time division multiple access (TDMA) scheme is adopted. In our system, LED and PMT are employed for transmitter and receiver devices, repectivey. Furthermore, we design algorithms for beacon transmission, beacon reception, time compensation, and time slot transition for hardware realization in field-programmable gate array (FPGA) board based on master-slave structure, where master node periodically transmits beacon signals to slave nodes. Experimental results are provided to evaluate the time synchronization error and specify the system key parameters for real-time implementation. We perform field tests for real-time communication network with the transmission range over 110 multiplied by 90 square meters, where the system throughput reaches 800kbps.