Optical wireless communications in challenging environments

A three-day Rank Prize symposium on ‘Optical wireless communications in challenging environments’ was successfully held from the 9th to the 12th of September at Leeming House Hotel, Lake District, UK.

The symposium aimed to bring together leading and early career researchers to discuss recent and prospective developments in OWC technologies specifically for deployment in challenging environments (including underwater, in space, in turbulent and/or highly absorbing/scattering atmosphere, non-line-of-sight communications and quantum communications between fixed and moving platforms, and in spectral regions including the ultraviolet, visible and infrared). The uniqueness of the meeting was to consider these topics together in a common discussion forum, to encourage technical exchange across sub-discipline boundaries in what is a very rapidly evolving field. This is also an area where the UK is very strongly represented, with many of the internationally leading groups being based here, so in many respects the meeting was able to capture the state of the art.

The event was organized by Dr. Sujan Rajbhandari, Professor Richard Penty, and Professor Martin Dawson, with dedicated in-person support during the event from Helen Berrington. The programme ran smoothly, and highly positive feedback was received from the participants including via social media after the event.

The symposium covered a wide range of topics related to Optical wireless communications (OWC) in challenging environments, including advanced communication and signal processing techniques for indoor, underwater, mining terrestrial, and non-terrestrial (space and flying platforms) applications. The program was divided into eight thematic sessions: S1. Resilient OWC system; S2. OWC device & system design; S3. Efficient OWC systems, S4. Quantum Communication in free-space, S5. OWC for 6G and beyond, S6. Terrestrial and & non-Terrestrial FSO, S7. OWC in challenging environments and S8. Beyond Line of Sight OWC.

The technical presentations from all the ECRs were outstanding. The organizers decided to award two prizes (PhD and early Post-doc) for the best ECR presentation, excluding experienced postdocs from the nominations to maintain fairness. After the final presentation on September 11th, Martin, Richard, and Sujan had a meeting and presented their three nominations for the best speakers in both categories. Each organizer then shared their views on the best presenters.

For the best PhD speaker category, as the nomination included a candidate from Cambridge, Richard opted out of the discussion to avoid any conflict of interest. Martin and Sujan agreed that Yee Hui Low from Cambridge University delivered the best presentation in the PhD category for her talk entitled ‘Linearization of directly modulated lasers for enhanced optical wireless communication’. In the early postdoc category, all agreed that Dr. Abderrahmen Trichili from Oxford University was the best presenter for his talk entitled ‘Optical wireless channel sounding’.

Professor Martin Dawson, University of Strathclyde

Professor Richard Penty, University of Cambridge

Dr Sujan Rajbhandari, University of Strathclyde