Optical Wireless Network Architecture

Optical wireless network has the potential to serve space-space, space-terrestrial/aircraft, aircraft-aircraft, data centers and metropolitan area networks. This paper addresses architecture features necessary for these networks. Free space optical (FSO) networks have two dimensions that are not encountered in fiber networks and that is: (1) its ability to connect without pre-deployment of infrastructures and (2) the ability to reconfigure its connection topology by beam steering in time scales of mS-S to adapt to traffic loads, switching node states and atmospheric conditions. This paper presents a multi-layer approach to optical wireless networks and how the architecture can be tuned to applications.