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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

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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