Optical Wireless Communication

Abstract

Optical wireless communication has attracted significant interest recently in industry and academia. This special issue features a collection of inter-related papers with the intention to cover all necessary multidisciplinary challenges to realize optical wireless networks. We hope that this special issue will serve as a comprehensive reference and that it will be a resource which fosters many more new ideas for this rapidly emerging field.This article is part of the theme issue 'Optical wireless communication'. Setting the sceneWireless communication has undoubtedly become an essential utility of our every-day lives. Most of the existing wireless communication systems use radio frequency (RF) technologies to convey information. However, with an ever-growing demand for wireless data, fuelled by new paradigms such as machine-type communication for autonomous systems as well as new devices such as intelligent glasses using augmented reality and virtual reality (VR), there is general agreement that the RF spectrum will not be sufficient to future-proof wireless communication. Consequently, it is imperative to consider also the optical spectrum for wireless communication.