The IEEE GLOBECOM Workshop on Optical Wireless Communications will be held in Abu Dhabi, UAE on December 9, 2018 in conjunction with IEEE GLOBECOM 2018.
More recently we have seen growing research activities in Optical Wireless Communications (OWC) as a complementary wireless communications technology to the more established radio frequency-based systems such as cellular, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth in order to overcome the spectrum crunch and provide high data rates in urban environment and crowded locations. The OWC technology offering advantages such as free license, wide bandwidth, inherent security, and no radio-frequency-based interference, which makes it very attractive for the emerging 5G wireless communications. Nevertheless, the widespread deployment of optical wireless systems, namely infrared, ultraviolet, and visible light communications (VLC), will face a number of challenged including the weather effects (mostly outdoor), eye and skin safety regulations, compatibility with existing networks, mobility (mostly in outdoor environment), and device/system performance. This has led to a substantial volume of research activities both at academia and industry at a global level to address the challenges and make OWC system a more reliable and viable wireless option. The 8th workshop on OWC cordially invites researchers to share latest research and innovations in OWC technologies, as well as their applications, including theory and practice in the design of OWC-based systems.