Performance analysis of free space optic transmission link for broadband access networks

Abstract Since the last two decades free space optical (FSO) communication transcends the RF communication and microwave systems because of its capability of carrying high bandwidth, license-free, long-range, small size, high bandwidth, low cost and ease of deployment. FSO communication has few limitations as well like beam dispersion, scintillation, weather effects etc. This paper demonstrates the implementation of FSO link and analysis of transmission performance of FSO channel for broadband access networks. The proposed FSO link is simulated in opti-system to analyze the physical characteristics of transmitter and receiver. The transmission performances of FSO link are validated using on/off keying (OOK) and differential phase shift keying (DPSK) at various atmospheric conditions with different data rates and transmission ranges. The transmission performance of the FSO link is analyzed under the influence of key parameters like launch power, beam divergence, atmospheric attenuation, receiver sensitivity and receiver aperture. The proposed model of the FSO link is investigated using key parameters like optical signal to noise ratio (OSNR), noise figure and bit error rate (BER).