An Optically Powered, Free Space Optical Communications Receiver

Abstract

Two of the key components of sensor motes are a power source and a communications receiver. One approach to creating very small motes is to use free space optical communication and to scavenge power from the optical downlink. In this paper photodiodes are described that were made on a standard CMOS process and generate electrical power from the downlink beam. These photodiodes can be used to power the optical receiver that converts the modulation on the downlink to a bit stream.

Jingjing Liu

Associate Professor

My research interests include low-power smart micro-sensor integrated circuit design, image sensors, biomedical sensors, and energy harvesting circuits.