Estimation of Effect of Fog on Terrestrial Free Space Optical Communication Link

Free Space Optical Communication Technology is expected as the successor to the existing communication technologies as many of its features like high bandwidth, high data rate, low bit error rate, high ease of deployment, license free and hacking free communication (which is almost impossible for the RF systems). Any free space optical link that is to be established at any place needs to be optimized according to the climatic conditions that prevail in that geographical location. Amongst all the climatic conditions like rain, fog, haze, snow, scintillation etc., fog plays predominant role in deteriorating the strength of the signal at a higher rate such that the signal level falls below the Threshold level which leads to outage period. Therefore, the effect of fog on the free space optical link is simulated and analyzed using the parameters like received optical power corresponding electrical power and quality factor. To support the discussion on the effect of fog on FSO link a low-cost experimental setup was designed and the performance of the signal was analyzed. It was observed that both the simulated and experimental results followed a similar pattern.