Single-Source Integrated Optical Wireless Positioning and Communication

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) has been identified as a key technology for future wireless networks, and multiple solutions have therefore been proposed recently, including systems based on optical wireless communications (OWC). Although promising, these OWC-based ISAC systems often need several optical sources and/or photoreceivers, or even complementary sensors (cameras etc.), to perform positioning while ensuring good communication performance. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a new concept of beamsteering-enabled ISAC system that takes full advantage of the possibility, conferred by optical beamsteering, of modifying the orientation of a single source to enable both communication with an user equipment (UE) and two-dimensional positioning of this UE. The architecture of the proposed system is detailed and then validated through simulations, which show that the use of beamsteering enables both a substantial increase in communication coverage and simultaneous cm-level positioning.