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© Fred Finkelberg / Rose Zanouz Light Fantastic Technologies Inc Dec 2011
2nd Workshop on Optical Wireless Communications (OWC) IEEE Globecom 2011 Houston Texas 05 Dec 2011
...
It is popular to express public eagerness for technical innovation as
a way to pull ourselves out of economic downturns
...but, in crisis, governments emphasize funding the necessary over
the possible This is a recipe for continuing with
what we have, instead of new opportunities
Yet
innovation can mean the survival of a company, even an economy, and is at
the heart of most business cycles
The Cycle of Research and Development
adapted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_and_development
Synthesize & Theorize
Explore, Hypothesize,
& Clarify
Design, Develop, &
Test
Implement, Study
Efficacy, & Improve
Scale Up & Study
Effectiveness
The ABCs of R&D are simple:
There is nothing unnatural about
research, development, or a relationship between them… although as a result of business decisions since the early 1970s, that relationship has been increasingly
fractured
The ABCs of R&D
A: Without R, there will be no D
B: Without D, R will dwindle C: Ideally, D can inspire and guide R
Innovation also often is about the unexpected, intelligently applied
From the 40’s through the 70’s, it was thought America’s electronics
industry would grow through military, scientific, and business uses…
…but from the 80’s, an explosion of personal uses…
gaming personal computers
PDAs Smartphones
other miniaturized personal devices
…had far more impact
Japanese version, Space Invaders arcade cabinet, Taito Corporation, 1978 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Invaders
Is FSO a realistic candidate for another such success?
A technology in search of markets, FSO has many advantages:
wide abilities alternate vulnerabilities vs. RF
little signal interference ultra-wide, unlicensed bandwidth
FSO advantages…
easy spatial re-use easy deployment
favorable Size, Weight & Power [SWaP] affordability
Typical Equipment Cost for Broadband Technologies, 2001
from http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf&AD=ADA401101
Leonidas Fountanas, 2001 Thesis, Naval Postgraduate School: An Assessment of Emerging Broadband Technologies
TECHNOLOGY
EQUIPMENT COST
ISDN $50 and up
DSL $200
CABLE MODEMS $200
ONE-WAY SATELLITE $150
TWO-WAY SATELLITE $400-$500
LMDS
CPE: $1,000-$4,000 BASE STATION: $100K-$200K
HALE CPE: $1,000-$2,000
FSO
750 GHZ TRANSCEIVER: $ 5,000 1,500 GHZ TRANSCEIVER: $50,000
FSO advantages…
strong physical-layer security--Low Probability of Interception (LPI)
versatility -- many application areas
strong military support
How then is it that FSO technology is still narrowly deployed as small-area,
short-range systems?--
last-mile (or <) backbone extensions in metro cores where more FO is unfeasible
FSO systems…
military comm where security is as important as data rates
FSO systems…
ultrafast indoor links while other technologies support
download and backhaul
There are many reasons…
Six Obstacles to Wider FSO Deployment
(1) FSO is seen as not market ready (“15-20 years away”)
(2) FSO is seen as a stand-alone network (hybrid vs. pure designs)
(3) public is unaware (back-office vs. hands-on infrastructure)
Obstacles…
(4) development strategies are driven by current market needs vs. basic abilities of the
technology —top-down vs. bottom-up planning
Obstacles…
(5) FSO is seen as a communications medium, not a control system though laser controls are common--
target acquisition asset tracking
automated vehicle guidance manufacturing
Remember, this has happened before:
Radio was invented as a control system before anyone thought of using it for
communications or broadcasting: Tesla’s 2-band radio-guided torpedo (1892-1898) presaged ubiquitous RF systems to
control distant machines
Obstacles…
(6) strong focus on technology platform challenges (R)…
parameter selection, measurement, and tuning signal encoding and BER improvement
one-to-one LOS and DLOS links
…rather than ultimate functionality (D) (describing and developing applications)
Can we turn this around, emphasizing
Development?
Four Important Examples of focusing on
D along with, or before R:
Allan Turing's ACE or Automatic Computing Engine in 1945– first the process flow
description, then the electrical engineering
Alan MathisonTuring: 23 June 1912 - 07 June 1954
Turing at the time of his election to Fellowship of the Royal Society http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing
Turing died 2 years before his colleague, Harry Husky, ported the ACE design into the Bendix
G15, arguably the world's first personal computer, in Los Angeles, 1956
Turing’s ACE at the London Science Museum http://www.turing.org.uk/turing/scrapbook/ace.html
D before R: Examples…
Thomas Edison’s affordable electric lamp (1879) was followed quickly by the Edison
Illumination Company (1880) …vertically integrated development of technology
and business
Original carbon-filament bulb by Thomas Edison http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescent_light_bulb
D balancing R…
Nikola Tesla’s hydro-electric power system (1895)
--Tesla was driven by both scientific curiosity and business competition from Edison’s rival dc power system
from http://www.teslasociety.com/adams.htm
D before R: Examples…
Henry Ford`s assembly line (1908): mass production begins
D before R…
Working alone in 1908, Henry Ford was most interested in making cars affordable—
Improvements could come later…
Henry Ford's 1928 Literary Digest interview, 20 years after http://www.fi.edu/learn/case-files/ford/mass.html
Ford’s determined vision of change, and his method, altered our expectations of how to
live, make goods, and do business
Mass production assembly line invented by Henry Ford
http://www.google.ca/search?q=Henry+Ford+mass+production&hl=en&client=firefoxa&hs=IjM&rls=org.mozilla:enUS:official&prmd=imvnso&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=oa_OTq__K4Lb0QGBi
ZE7&ved=0CEwQsAQ&biw=1280&bih=861
What can FSO do?
The Need for FSO If FSO is fated to wait another human
generation [1] before it becomes a common creature…
Need for FSO…
…that would probably be because we assume FSO alone won’t easily replace current
technology [2]… …even though FSO is certainly needed
Our networks—wireless and Internet—are hugely challenged now, headed for a 1000-fold
traffic increase before 2020
• all current systems need relief, not replacement • candidate network additions must be affordable
and absolutely back-compatible
…or we will see more examples of bad technology development like the forcible switchover to digital
television in North America
FSO is indeed a leading choice as a partner technology to--
relieve spectrum exhaustion / Internet congestion; and to
improve distribution of very high-quality services in currently unfeasible areas
…not just remote or sparsely-populated areas, but metro cores, where only a fraction of users have quality access
Some FSO applications are already widespread:
remote controls --1 billion+ using Diffuse LOS, slow IR
An IR television remote control unit (RCU) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_control
One common local link FSO topology, from http://www.laseroptronics.com/index.cfm/id/57-68.htm
Common FSO applications (local links)…
• LAN-to-LAN in metro cores
• WLL variations: Wireless Local Loop for provisioning buildings/neighborhood
• local backup of FO or RF systems
• temporary and disaster recovery networks --as after 9-11
• backbone extensions --simple, cheap
Common FSO applications (AGV guidance)
lasers are the commonest form of motion control for Automated Guided Vehicles in manufacturing,
construction, intelligent warehousing, and shipping
laser guided AGVs
Images from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_guided_vehicle
Heavy-duty AGV Light-duty assembly AGV
Laser Guided Unitload AGV
All such FSO applications, even remote controls, are usually below
the horizon of user attention [3]
FSO as a Control System [5]
All these illustrate how FSO control systems may soon overshadow FSO communications:
Remote controls Laser guided ordinance
AGVs Laser cutting (airplane parts to eye surgery)
Laser guided assembly
FSO Control Systems…
FSO control technology will provide orders of magnitude higher data rates to enable
unprecedented control sophistication
FSO Control Systems…
FSO control innovations will improve--
complex machines e.g., aircraft
complex environments e.g., road and vehicle systems (traffic ITS)
complex electro-mechanical aggregates e.g., elevator provisioning, building automation
So far, FSO has been applied
enthusiastically to existing markets
Yet, very successful historical
technologies… electric power generation automobile mass production
electric lighting …were driven first by what was possible:
Each such innovation created new
markets, based on a technology that introduced new abilities
A handful of such innovations transformed users’ lifestyles as they
became available…
In the 1800s, the steam engine and its application in factories and railroads
began a massive shift away from agrarian lifestyles and cottage industries (the
Industrial Revolution)
In the first half of the 1900s, mass vehicle production, then the US Interstate Highways, were models of rational
technical and economic development that intensified the shift to big cities
Both started with leadership able to unify
the development planning process,
an approach that might also help FSO
I-787 in Watervliet, New York, showing the Exit 8 diamond interchange http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate Highway_System
A number of other game-changing technologies were invented with a
particular purpose and a clear intent to commercialize
…including
Edison’s multiplex telegraphs 1872-1876 Bell’s telephone 1876 Tesla’s radio 1892-1898
Rogers’ rectifier tube 1925 Mobile handheld phones 1973 1G cellular telephones 1979 RIM's first Blackberry 2003
Is FSO capable of catalyzing such transformative (“disruptive”) shifts?
We think so…
What We Need:
We believe what FSO needs most is a strong vision of its usefulness, and a will to change lifestyle, based on what FSO
can deliver
Research is essential, but by itself research is not enough to create
products, or foster acceptance of them That is all about the will to create useful novelty, and a deliberate rearranging of life as we know it—because we want to
Knowing what FSO can do, perhaps the most important question we can ask is,
What do we want to change?
It’s up to us to put temptation in front of users:
As Optical Wireless enlarges, together we can build an FSO & hybrids
industry that sustains itself with revenue for each next stage of
development
Let’s hope to keep this marvelous playground open…
...
® LIGHT FANTASTIC
Light Fantastic Technologies Inc / Dec 2011
lightfantastictechnologies.com
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