A Novel Hybrid Detection Scheme for Visible Light Broadcast Communication and Dedicated Communication Based on a GaN Detector Array

Current radio access networks (RAN) adopt broadcast/multicast or dedicated line network architectures to prioritize quality-of-service (QoS) or security. As the spectrum depletion in radio frequency (RF) spectrum becomes increasingly severe after the advent of 5G, visible light optical access networks have attracted the attention of academia and industry. However, the key receiving devices that support both broadcast and dedicated point-to-point transmission remain a research field that has not yet been extensively explored. This work demonstrates a hybrid detection scheme for visible light wireless access networks enabled by an integrated detector array based on GaN MQW structure. It utilizes both laser diode (LD) /light-emitting diode (LED) to simultaneously support both high-speed point-to-point transmission and large field-of-view (FoV) broadcast communication using a parallelly-connected detector array device. In this research, this system allows flexible rate choices by weighing the power allocation between two channels. The maximum data rate is 12 Gbps for the dedicated line channel and 200 Mbps for the broadcast channel. The FoV when receiving the broadcast signal can reach at most 132.8°. This work provides a solution to include two visible light channels with a huge disparity in quality-of-service (QoS) simultaneously by a miniaturized integrated detector array, proving that a visible light access network is able to provide a flexible access network with more desirable capacity than its RF counterparts.