Wavelength dependence of a fiber-bundle based FSO link

Abstract

A transmitter and receiver design based on the use of fiber optic bundles have been proposed and studied both experimentally in the laboratory and theoretically through simulation, and have shown promise for providing enhanced functionality in mitigating the effects of turbulence and weather on the pointing, acquisition and tracking problem. In this paper, the operation of an FSO link constructed from these designs is analyzed under similar environmental conditions but transmitting at two different wavelengths. A transmitter with a linear fiber array transmitted over a brick surface at either 1310 nm or 1550 nm wavelength to a receiver constructed using a hexagonal array of 19 fibers located 15 feet away. Data at 100 kb/s was transmitted across the link and the collected signal was recorded for off-line statistical analysis, including achieved bit-error rate. The investigation finds that, when eliminating effects due to artifacts in source operation, dependence of link operation on wavelength is minimal, even though the optical alignment was optimized for only 1550 nm.