Design of Non-Binary Error-Correcting Codes for Free-Space Optical Communications

Free-space optical (FSO) communications is an important research area and is now considered to be a competing technology to well-established outdoor RF communication systems. FSO communications can transmit and receive data at very high rates at a low cost and are not subject to RF spectrum licensing regulations, but their range is limited due to the beam becoming dispersed with distance, and also the effects of weather such as fog. To attempt to overcome these issues, this project proposes to design non-binary error-correction codes in combination with signal processing techniques. Non-binary codes are a niche research area and their symbols are not confined to only 0s and 1s, which allows us to design more powerful error-correcting codes compared with binary codes. The performance of the proposed systems will be evaluated over realistic FSO channel models with the aim of demonstrating gains over other existing solutions in the literature.  

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Application enquiries: 

Dr Martin Johnston, [Email Address Removed], Staff Profile - School of Engineering - Newcastle University (ncl.ac.uk)