Performance evaluation of a triangular pyramidal fly-eye diversity detector for optical wireless communications

Background noise and multipath propagation are the major impairments in indoor optical wireless links. They can introduce heavy distortion in the received optical signal and can degrade the system performance. An investigation into the optical wireless system performance has been carried out for two configurations: a hybrid system, and a diffuse system with a single detector and a triangular pyramidal fly-eye diversity receiver (PFDR). Original results for both systems that employ a PFDR antenna, under different fields of view (FOVs), are presented. The design goal is to reduce the effect of signal spread and improve the signal-to-noise ratio when the system operates under the constraints of background noise and multipath dispersion. It is demonstrated that through PFDR FOV optimization the directional background interference can be reduced and the received pulse shape improved.