Broadcast free space optical communications via diffusion

An optical communication system comprising:

• a transmitter including:
• a laser for emitting a beam of laser pulses having a wavelength,
• a modulator for encoding data in the laser pulses in the beam, and
• a director for aiming the beam along a line-of-sight between the transmitter and a feature of an outdoor environment, and for transmitting the laser pulses of the beam through free space of the outdoor environment and then onto the feature of the outdoor environment;
• and
• at least one receiver each including:
• a wide-angle sensor for determining a direction of a line-of-sight between the feature and the receiver,
• a narrow-angle optics for receiving light that via the free space includes a diffusion of the beam from the feature, the director also for aiming the narrow-angle optics in the direction of the feature,
• a line filter for blocking the light not having the wavelength,
• a detector for detecting the laser pulses in the diffusion of the beam within the light received by the narrow-angle optics and passing through the line filter, and
• a demodulator for decoding the data from the laser pulses detected by the detector.

An optical communication system comprising a plurality of transceivers, which employ a shared feature of an outdoor environment, and each transceiver of the transceivers includes:

• a transmitter including a laser for emitting a beam of laser pulses having a wavelength, wherein the transmitter is adapted to encode data into the laser pulses in the beam, and the transmitter is adapted to transmit the beam of laser pulses onto the shared feature of the outdoor environment;
• a receiver including a line filter for blocking light not having the wavelength, wherein the receiver is adapted to decode data from the light that passes through the line filter and includes a diffusion from the shared feature of the beam from the transmitter of another of the transceivers;
• and
• an arbitrator for allocating access to the shared feature of the outdoor environment, the arbitrator implementing an allocation scheme selected from the group consisting of time-division multiple access, code-division multiple access, and orthogonal frequency division multiple access dynamically controlling the wavelength of the laser of the transmitter and the wavelength of the line filter of the receiver.