A Real-Time MEMS Mirror Based Tracking System for Optical Wireless Communication

This paper demonstrates a micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) mirror based real-time tracking system to support mobility in optical wireless communication (OWC). The saturation characteristics of the adopted commercial photomultiplier tube (PMT) are first investigated, and an adaptive thresholding technique is proposed accordingly. Experimental results reveal a high consistency between the estimated and measured positions of the target. Additionally, the proposed system is capable of improving the bit error rate (BER) performance under different test conditions as compared to scenarios without tracking, achieving a 31.25 Mbps transmission rate at a moving speed of 0.75 m/s with an average BER below the forward error correction limit.