Experimental demonstration of a free space optical wireless video transmission system based on image compression sensing algorithm

The wireless transmission of video data mainly entails addressing the massive video stream data and ensuring the quality of image frame transmission. To reduce the amount of data and ensure an optimal data transmission rate and quality, we propose a free-space optical video transmission system that applies compressed sensing (CS) algorithms to wireless optical communication systems. Based on the Artix-7 series field programmable gate array (FPGA) chip, we completed the hardware design of the optical wireless video transceiver board; the CS image is transmitted online to the FPGA through Gigabit Ethernet, and the video data is encoded by gigabit transceiver with low power (GTP) and converted into an optical signal, which is relayed to the atmospheric turbulence simulation channel through an attenuator and a collimating mirror. After the optical signal is decoded by photoelectric conversion at the receiving end, the Camera-Link frame grabber is d; thus, the image is collected, and it is reconstructed offline. Herein, the link transmission conditions of different algorithm sampling rates, optical power at the receiving end, and atmospheric coherence length are measured. The experimental results indicate that the encrypt-then-compress (ETC) type algorithm exhibits a more optimal image compression transmission reconstruction performance, and that the 2D compressed sensing (2DCS) algorithm exhibits superior performance. Under the condition that the optical power satisfies the link connectivity, the PSNR value of the reconstructed image is 3–7 dB higher than that of the comparison algorithm. In a strong atmosphere turbulence environment, the peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) of the corresponding reconstructed image under different transmission rates at the receiving end can still exceed 30 dB, ensuring the complete reconstruction of the image.