Direct detection and quasi-coherent subsystems for vehicular optical area networks

Abstract

The data traffic that will be handled by future vehicles will be a challenging part of the in-vehicle networking, making the industry to change the traditional standards used for in-vehicle communications and expanding to more bandwidth dedicated ones. Moreover, it might happen that traditional copper wiring is not capable of carrying Multi-Gigabit communications inside a small infrastructure as a vehicle is, so other communications ways have to be explored. In this project, we study the introduction of glass fiber optics for the in-vehicle networking, creating Vehicular Optical Area Networks, using different technologies. On the one hand, looking at the near future, a commercial based P2P fiber optic network is designed and explained. On the other hand, looking at future horizons where cars need to handle multigigabit amounts of traffic and have a wide variety of sensors and nodes in a network, a WDM dual fiber ring network topology is proposed. With both networks, we pretend to demonstrate that fiber optics can be an alternative for the in-vehicle networking of future vehicles. In order to support the networks designs, different subsystems of the networks have been designed, implemented and characterized, such as: a SFP Evaluation Board and a QuasiCoherent receiver