Free Space Optics – Monitoring Setup for Experimental Link

This paper deals with advanced Free Space Optics communication technology. Two FSO nodes are needed in order to make a connection. Laser diodes are used as light sources. Simple OOK modulation is involved in this technology. FSO system offers multiple advantages indeed. However, a direct visibility is required in order to set up a communication link. This fact yields perhaps the most significant weakness of this technology. Obviously, there is no a chance to fight the weather phenomena like fog, heavy rain, dust and many other particles which are naturally present in the atmosphere. That’s why there is a key task to find a suitable solution to keep FSO link working with high reliability and availability. It turns out that it’s necessary to have knowledge about weather situation when FSO link operates (liquid water content - LWC, geographical location, particle size distribution, average particle diameter, temperature, humidity, wind conditions, pressure and many other variable weather parameters. It’s obvious that having most of mentioned parameter’s values stored in database (implicitly in charts) would be really beneficial. This paper presents some of mentioned indicators continuously gathered from several sensors located close to one of FSO nodes