Help may be sought from the Nonlinear group in the Maths department. The project involves a limited amount of hardware, software, and mathematical analysis. It is appropriate for a student with a strong interest in chaos and reliability issues in electronics. RS232 data link on an optical beam. This project has run successfully in the past at MSc level, for which there is a report by Hans Peter Andrae in the UoS Library, at a data rate of 9600 baud over a distance of 3km.
Applications are to computer LANs, with semi-wireless links.
It is envisaged that the light will be piped from room to room with light pipes and beamed across the work surface into the receiver on the terminal. A tradeoff is made between link range and losses in the light transmission in a cluttered room. Subcarriers are used, with a suitable modulation and detection scheme. It will be necessary to use pyramidal horn antennas with a gain around 18dB, cross section about 8 cms square. The project consists of verifying this link budget calculation experimentally, as far as is possible.