The Emerging Optical Wireless Commun. for Future Wireless Commun. Networks

Dr. Hoa Le-Minh

Northumbria University, UK

Abstract

Artificial general lighting sources are currently evolving through the traditional fluorescent and incandescent sources to the modern energy saving light bulbs and now white light emitting diodes (LEDs). The introduction of solid state LED lighting source has attracted the attention of communications engineer’s worldwide, enabling the achievement of the dual functionality of room illumination whilst simultaneously transmitting wireless data via visible light communication (VLC), or optical wireless communications (OWC) in general, in optical spectrum regime. Although the existing wireless networks are primely dominated by radio-based technology, the emerging OWC will play increasingly important role in future wireless communications landscape. It is anticipated that both spectrum regimes, radio and optical, will eventually contribute equally for the next network generation, especially in nanocell and picocell network structures. This talk will outline the growth of optical wireless communications including VLC, and present the challenges and roadmap of the technology for the future generation of wireless networks.

Biography

Dr Hoa Le Minh is an Associate Professor at Northumbria University at Newcastle, UK. Prior to joining Northumbria University he was a research fellow at Siemens AG, Munich, Germany and at University of Oxford, UK. His research area is optical communications, visible light communications, sensor network and Smartphone technology in which he has published over 150 papers in journals and conferences.  He participates in a number of European and industrial projects. Hoa has chaired a number of international conferences/workshops and sessions in telecommunications. He is currently the Chairman of IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc) Chapter of UK and Ireland, and the Editor of IEEE Communications Letters.