Demonstration of 3D-printed Optical Antennas for pervasive Optical Wireless Communication with non-Optical, commercial materials

We demonstrate the possibility of using 3D-printed, see-through planar elements built with commercially available materials as fluorescent Optical Antennas (OAs) for fast Optical Wireless Communication (OWC). OWC represents a key technology in the forthcoming next-generation communication services (6G), given its intrinsic combination of bandwidth (BW), security, and pervasiveness. In the Visible Light Communication (VLC) approach, ubiquitous white or colored LED sources can also be used as optical transmitters besides providing indoor/outdoor illumination and signaling, strongly fostering the implementation of the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm. Here, the intrinsic optical properties (such as BW, field of View (FoV), and collection efficiency) of four different fluorescent slabs grown with commercial, non-optical resins typically employed to realize transparent objects are fully characterized, unveiling for the first time their large potential as receivers in VLC applications. Complete VLC communication tests are reported, demonstrating attainable bit rates larger than 70 Mb s−1 with On-Off Keying (OOK) modulation, which could be largely increased toward the Gb s−1 target exploiting high-order modulation schemes. This work can have a profound impact toward the full-fledged implementation of the IoT paradigm, showing that transparent 3D-printed objects can be exploited as optical front ends in a new class of VLC and OWC receivers.