GUJCOST sponsored Two-Day National Webinar on ?Optical Wireless Communication: Challenges and Opportunities?

A Two-Day National Webinar on ?Optical Wireless Communication: Challenges and Opportunities? was organised during August 6-7, 2021 through the WebEx platform. This webinar was partially funded by the Gujarat Council on Science and Technology (GUJCOST). All the sessions in this webinar were conducted by renowned experts from Industry and Academic Institutes. The registration of the webinar was open for engineering students of UG, PG, and PhD programs, faculty members, and industry personnel across the nation. More than 20 participants from different regions participated in this National level seminar. The webinar was coordinated by Prof Hardik Joshi and Dr Dhaval Shah from Electronics and Communication Engineering Department.  The inaugural session was chaired by the HoD, Electronics and Communication Engineering Department, IT-NU. The webinar was planned for two days from 8.45 am to 4.00 pm with expert sessions as well as a demonstration of the design of FSO link, Optical links in Optisystem, and FSO channel BER analysis in Matlab software which are utilized in the industry for design and simulation of OWC links. Both the coordinators and the following experts were the resource persons who conducted sessions in the webinar:

• Prof (Dr) Raghunath Shevgaonkar, Emeritus Professor, IIT Bombay
• Prof (Dr) Yogendrakumar Prajapati, MNIT Allahabad
• Dr Vivek Bohara, IIIT Delhi
• Dr Sanya Anees, IIIT Guwahati
• Dr Anirban Bhowal, INRS-EMT Montreal, Canada

The objective of the webinar was to provide an introduction of different techniques of Optical Wireless Communication Techniques (FSO communication, Visible light communication, Hybrid RF-FSO communication), its current applications and design of OWC link and its BER analysis in the software (Optisystem and Matlab) which are used globally in this field.  The key focus of this webinar was to familiarize the participants with the application of OWC links in the current scenario through interaction with renowned academicians, scientists, and experts who are working on it.

The content covered in the webinar was as follows:

Recent Trends in Optical Communication

1. Free Space Optical Communication
2. Hybrid RF-FSO Communication
3. Spatial modulation in Optical Wireless Communication
4. Demonstration FSO link, WDM system in Optisystem
5. Demonstration BER Analysis of FSO link under different turbulence conditions in Matlab

Formal and informal feedbacks were taken at the end of the webinar. A Certificate was issued to all participants who had registered and attended all the sessions.