Physical layer analysis of optical wireless data centers

As the time progresses, the demand for bandwidth increases due to the evolution of new technologies supporting video on demand, music, etc., the traditional data centers heavily rely on electronics and thus dissipated a large amount of heat. To reduce both cabling and heat dissipated, fiber optic communication was supposed to be the next technology to replace current electronic systems, but unfortunately, fiber optic technology is not matured enough to be implemented. Therefore, as an alternative optical wireless communication (OWC) can be used, where advantages of optical components are availed and transmission media is free space, thus reducing cabling. This paper aims to present the modeling of wireless optical data center networks and evaluate bit error rate (BER) performance at the physical layer. To the best of our knowledge, this analysis is presented first time in case of OWC-based data centers.