AbstractFree space optical communication systems (FSO’s) have surfaced as admired means of communication in the past few years. High speed of operation, low bandwidth requirements and system reliability are the major factors responsible for their wide range of applications. These communication systems use air as a medium of transmission. Since there is no component like fiber or cable, but air is only medium, the variations in atmospheric conditions play a vital role in performance of these networks. The reason behind is that the conditions like presence of humidity, haze, snowfall, rain, dust or smoke changes the attenuation coefficient of medium. The raised attenuation levels results in increased losses and need to be carefully monitored. The present work analyzes the influence of rain on the performance of FSO network in terms of quality of transmission. The paper discusses the impact of rainfall on attenuation coefficient of air. Then impact of this attenuation on network transmission is presented in terms of BER and Q-factor. In order to demonstrate the impact, BER and Q-value is calculated for 10 Gbps FSO link for clear weather and rainfall conditions.
120 Gbit/s high‐speed WDM‐QPSK free‐space optical transmission through 1 km atmospheric channel