Random weather phenomena in free-space optical - FTTx communication system

Abstract

In the last few decades, optical wireless communication became an essential technology in various applications. Researchers have paid more attention to achieving high bandwidth and low loss. However, the random weather phenomena cause attenuation of optical signals, thus will decrease the bandwidth in optical wireless communication. In this article, we investigate a hybrid free-space optical (FSO) and fiber-to-the-x (FTTx) communications link based on wavelength-division multiple access (WDMA) over different random weather phenomena that operate over different wavelengths. The performance of the hybrid FSO-FTTx system is evaluated under clear sky weather phenomena, heavy rain weather phenomena, and heavy haze weather phenomena based on BER and Q-Factor measurements. The results show that we can transmit 140 Gbit/s data over 9650 meters a hybrid link under the clear sky and heavy rain weather phenomena, 3950 meters over. Additionally, the transmission of 140 Gbit/s data can be achieved for 1450 meters under the heavy haze weather phenomenon.