ABSTRACT

The demand for bandwidth in mobile communications is continuously growing as the numbers of users and applications are increasing. Beyond 2020 we will be seeing the widespread application of the internet of things (IoT), people-to-people, people-to-machine, and machine-to-machine communications, which will require access to a global high-speed communications network. The dominant technologies so far have been optical fibre and radio frequency (RF) communications. However, it is anticipated that the move from the fourth generation to the fifth generation wireless networks will not be based on transport and routing/switching technologies anymore or on a single transmission technology. It will be based on more flexible and open, able-to-evolve, multi-transmission technologies. This chapter gives an overview of wireless communications, focusing on the current state of play, issues, and why we need optical wireless communications (OWC) technology as an alternative and complement to RF. It covers wireless access transmission schemes, the comparison between RF and OWC, and link configurations, application areas, safety and regulations, and future challenges of OWC.