The system can send arbitrary data at 27.7kbps baud.

The system illustrated above is set up to send voice data. The microphone input is conditioned (amplified and biased) so that the full eight bit range of the analogue to digital converter is utilized. A fair amount of time was spent optimizing the amplifier for the mic input so as to minimize popping but maximize quality. Once the digital signal is obtained by the ADC, the MCU passes the signal to the UART. The UART sets a transmit pin high or low according to the serial protocol. Some conditioning is applied to this signal as well in order to ensure constant current to the laser. On the receiver side, the signal is read by a photo transistor. The signal coming off the transistor is put through a comparator to generate appropriate high and low signals. The UART reads these signals and generates a byte according to the serial protocol. This byte is applied to a port, sent through a digital to analogue converter, and applied to a speaker.

Laser Communications System

"A one way laser communications system that is capable of the transmission of both text and sound."

Introduction
Laser communications systems are wireless connections through the atmosphere. They work similarly to fiber optic links, except the beam is transmitted through free space. While the transmitter and receiver must require line-of-sight conditions, they have the benefit of eliminating the need for broadcast rights and buried cables. Laser communications systems can be easily deployed since they are inexpensive, small, low power and do not require any radio interference studies. The carrier used for the transmission signal is typically generated by a laser diode. Two parallel beams are needed, one for transmission and one for reception. Due to budget restrictions, the system implemented in this project is only one way. Laser communications have been a hot topic lately, as solutions for how to satisfy ever increasing bandwidth needs are in high demand. Some have suggested that bandwidth could be distributed in neighborhoods by putting laser communication systems on top of homes and pointing them towards a common transceiver with a fast link to the Internet. With possible transmit speeds of up to a gigabit per second, this is an exciting area. Other applications for this technology include temporary connectivity needs (e.g. sporting events, disaster scenes, or conventions), or space based communications. 2003 Keith Carter, Michael Muccio

Hardware
A description of the hardware and circuitry used in this project follows. Resistor, capacitor and diode values are ommitted because they need to tuned depending on the hardware used. The specific use for each component is documented.

Microphone Amplifier The first step in transmitting sound is to digitize soundwaves. For this we used an electret microphone purchased from Radtronics. Frequent shoppers at Tito's place downtown know that finding spec sheets for products there is impossible. The microphone he sold us had three leads, which after considerable angst we decided were for power, ground, and signal. The signal coming off the mic was far too low to be read (with any degree of precision) by the analog to digital converter. So of course, an amplifier is needed. Before the signal is put through the amplifier however it is first put through a capicitor to remove DC, and then through a voltage divider to appropriately bias the signal. A LF353 op-amp is used to boost the signal, the gain is adjusted by the resistors and for the mystery microphone the gain is around 50-100 (depending on how much popping and how much quality you want).

Laser Driver After the A/D converter translates the mic signal into 8 bits, the MCU generates the appropriate bits to send (including start and stop bits) and applies them to the laser driver circuit a 5V and 0V signals. The BJT in this circuit turns on at 5V and provides the proper current according to the diode and resitor values.

Receiver A photo diode detects the laser pulses in a different (distant) location. This signal is put through a comparator in order to generate solid 5V and 0V values which are applied to the receive pin on the microcontroller.

Laser Driver Once the signal is put through the DAC (not shown, it's a simple ladder), it is boosted and low pass filtered (to improve sound quality). 2003 Keith Carter, Michael Muccio

Parts

BPW77 Phototransistor

$1.95

D660-5 Laser Diode

$9.00

Microphone NTE834 Voltage Comparator LF353 Operational Amplifier

$2.59 $1.39 FREE! (stocked in lab)

LMC7111 Operational Amplifier FREE! (stocked in lab) Focusing Lens FREE! (cannibalized)
2003 Keith Carter, Michael Muccio

Mechanics

Focussing the laser turned out to be quite a challenge. When we ordered the laser diode, we presumed it would come focussed. Imagine our disappointment when it was not. Fortunately, we had an old laser diode to cannibalize. Bill Mutch used a razor saw to cut the lens off of it which we then placed over our laser diode at the appropriate distance using medical tubing and electrical tape. The diode still unfocusses when barely touched, but it's better than nothing. Aiming the diode at the phototransistor is another problem. Because the diode is fairly focussed and the phototransistor is sensitive at particular angles, steady hands are needed to aim at distance. A typical setup involves two staplers (to lean the breadboards against) and lots of tape (to tape them at bizarre angles).

Receiver and Transmitter 2003 Keith Carter, Michael Muccio

Results
What would a project be without results? By using the built in hardware UART to communicate with Hyperterm on a PC we have tested our project to transmit text at up to 38.4 kbps. At this rate it is entirely error free. The system can likely transmit much faster, but for text applications anything faster is overkill. We can send arbitrary data at a rate of up to 27.7 kbps. Although we could not pin point the exact reason why the reliability of our audio transmission fell drastically at bauds higher than 27.7 kbps, we do suspect that is has something to do with a timing problem involving the time required by the ADC to complete a conversion since the biggest difference between the audio code and the text code is that the audio utilizes the ADC and transmits continuously. We did not have sufficient time to test this hypothesis, but as we did have the ADC clock turned up as fast as it could go (125 kHz) we do not believe there would have been much we could do about this problem anyway. In the end, 27.7 kbps is plenty fast enough to transmit our voltage values if the sampling rate is 3 kHz. So ultimately the baud limitation did not degrade the quality of the transmitted audio. On the other hand we were somewhat surprised by exactly just how poor the 8-bit audio sampled at 3

kHz sounded (even though we knew it would not be great). Even after some liberal low pass filtering the audio was still of poor quality. One definitely would not be able to hear a pin drop over this line.

Performance
If the laser is properly aimed at the phototransistor as discussed in the mechanics section, the bit stream is received perfectly. As such text transmission works flawlessly at our largest test distance, across the Digital Systems Lab. Unfortunately, the quality of our focus application (voice transmission) is limited by 3 kHz sampling and 8 bit sound. The speaker on one end is clearly audible on the other, but it takes a trained ear to decipher what he or she is saying.

The Next Go Round

All of our dreams and wishes for the next go round lie mainly with the ADC. If we had more time we would do well to utilize all 10 bits of resolution that the ADC affords instead of just 8. It would be fairly simple to modify the UART code to transmit 10 bits instead of 8 (although this would be a departure from the serial standard). Also (though we realize ADCs are more difficult to build than DACs) we would wish for a faster ADC. This would allow us to sample faster and, if our suspicions are correct, to transmit at a higher baud. All of these would improve the quality of the sound. Another thing we would have done differently would be to implement a full duplex software UART in order to establish a 2-way link. This would require the UART to both receive and transmit simultaneously and would likely involve some clever use of interrupts. Because our budget and the availability of only one collimating lens only allowed us to build a 1-way link in the first place we did not pursue the full duplex software UART idea. (Note that we could have implemented a 2-way link using the Mega32 hardware UART which is full duplex, so the decision to make a 1-way link was purely because of a budget and supply limitation.) One wish we have that would not require new hardware would be to spend more time optimizing the use of the 8 bits of information we do have. As of now only about 4 or 5 bits are effectively being used with the microphone gain settings as they are. If we were to use closer to 8 bits the audio quality would improve noticeably (for a while we were only using 3 or 4 bits and were able to improve it slightly by fiddling with the gain resistors in the microphone circuit). This is a problem which just involves time spent fiddling around with values to get the bit usage just right and would be especially important to do in order to gain anything if 10 bits were used instead of 8.

Interference, Safety and Usability

We did experience some interference in the final testing of our system, although the interference did not come from within our system, nor did it come from other peoples projects. It came from other people. As one might expect, when we tested our system to see if it was capable of trans-room operation if someone walked through the laser beam the transmission was interrupted. The interruption was only momentary and had no lasting effects. Obviously if such laser communication systems are to ever become widely used they will have to be placed where they will not be obstructed. Having people walk through the beam brings up another point: safety. We did our best to emphasize the

dangers to everyone in the room at the time (with the help of Prof. Land) to be sure no one accidentally looked into the laser beam of any of its reflections. Laser light can be very harmful to the eye if shined directly into it and so we had to be very careful with this aspect of our system. The most difficult thing to master about the usability of our system was aiming the laser diode at the photodiode on the receiver. Once the laser was aimed and appropriately focused the use of our system was fairly straightforward: talk into the microphone and listen at the other end.

Intellectual Property Considerations

The only intellectual property consideration is to not that some of the concepts we utilized in the development of our software UART were borrowed from the Atmel App Note 305 (Half Duplex Compact Software UART) at http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/app_notes.asp?family_id=607. As mentioned before, the code provided was written entirely in assembler language and so we decided to develop our own version in C.

Task Division
We worked very closely throughout this whole project, and as such a division of tasks is hard to do. Keith probably spent more time on the actual design of the web page while Mike spent more time writing the content. Keith spent more time figuring out the analog components of the project while Mike was more the software guru. We both feel very comfortable with the amount of work each of us put in.

Final Conclusions
Ultimately we believe that we achieved what we initially set out to do. Even though the sound quality was not as good as we may have liked we did still transmit audio over the link and so we feel quite satisfied with what we have accomplished.