Rain impact on FSO link attenuation based on theory and measurement

The FSO link becomes a usual mean of modern wireless communications. But it suffers from atmospheric particles causing attenuation. That's why this random attenuation must be carefully considered by the FSO link design. As it is known the most serious atmospheric phenomenon is fog, and low cloudiness. But the rain attenuation (night mare of mm wave links) is not negligible on optical links, too. In this contribution we focus on rain attenuation from theoretical as well as experimental point of view. Statistics and rain event analysis are shown. There is an overview and a comparison of several formulas for rain attenuation derived from DSD or rain rate. Rain is not the worst phenomena for the transmission but we can't neglect its influence on FSO. Only full understanding of influence of real atmosphere can lead to solution of a high availability of FSO systems.