Mobile optical communications has so far largely been lim-
ited to short ranges of about ten meters, since the highly di-
rectional nature of optical transmissions would require costly
mechanical steering mechanisms. Advances in CCD and
CMOS imaging technology along with the advent of vis-
ible and infrared (IR) light sources such as (light emitting
diode) LED arrays presents an exciting and challenging con-
cept which we call as visual-MIMO (multiple-input multiple-
output) where optical transmissions by multiple transmitter
elements are received by an array of photodiode elements
(e.g. pixels in a camera). Visual-MIMO opens a new vista
of research challenges in PHY, MAC and Network layer re-
search and this paper brings together the networking, com-
munications and computer vision elds to discuss the feasi-
bility of this as well as the underlying opportunities and chal-
lenges. Example applications range from household/factory
robotic to tactical to vehicular networks as well pervasive
computing, where RF communications can be interference-
limited and prone to eavesdropping and security lapses while
the less observable nature of highly directional optical trans-
missions can be benecial. The impact of the characteristics
of such technologies on the medium access and network lay-
ers has so far received little consideration. Example charac-
teristics are a strong reliance on computer vision algorithms
for tracking, a form of interference cancellation that allows
successfully receiving packets from multiple transmitters si-
multaneously, and the absence of fast fading but a high
susceptibility to outages due to line-of-sight interruptions.
These characteristics lead to signicant challenges and op-
portunities for mobile networking research.