Performance Investigation of Optical Communication System using FSO and OWC Channel

Abstract

The evolving expertise in optical wireless communication (OWC) and free space optics (FSO) proposes numerous benefits above conventional radio network owing to unlicensed bandwidth, low installation time, affordable cost, high data rate and insusceptibility to electromagnetic interference. In this paper, two wireless optical communication systems are investigated, one with FSO channel and another with OWC channel. Both the systems have been analyzed using quality factor and bit error rate as performance metrics. The mathematical model for received optical power and Pointing error has been taken into account for system considerations. It was observed that superior quality factor and minimum bit error rate for long link distance (80 km) was achieved with OWC channel while FSO did well only for short range (800 m) communication.