Implementation of a low cost short-haul optical wireless link

There lies a big economical challenge in providing network connectivity to rural regions in the developing world. Most of the existing connectivity technologies incur a high deployment cost that limits their affordability. Optical wireless communication provides a low cost solution which can be used for last mile access. This paper demonstrates the implementation of a 100 m optical wireless link capable of supporting 10 Mbps. The total cost of building the link is within 20 USD. The relatively low data rate is chosen considering the main applications of voice and messaging in these regions. The low cost has been achieved by designing our own transmitter and receiver circuits. The components used to build the link have been mentioned in the paper to substantiate the claim of low cost.