Terrestrial Free Space Optical Communication Systems Availability based on Meteorological Visibility Data for South Africa

In spite of the numerous advantages of employing free space optical (FSO) communication systems as viable complementary platforms for next-generation networks, the presence of atmospheric disturbances such as fog and scintillations are major sources of signal impairment which degrade system performance. Consequently, it becomes imperative to investigate and contextualize the unique climatic conditions in those locations where FSO links are to be deployed. Statistical evaluation of meteorological visibility data collected for various cities in South Africa is thus hereby employed in estimating the availability performance of FSO links transmitting at both 850 nm and 1550 nm. It is determined that the cities of Mbombela and Cape Town have the lowest performance due to the high occurrence of fog events as compared to other regions in South Africa. During foggy periods, FSO links in Mbombela and Cape Town would have availabilities of ∼99.6% for link distances of 500 and 600 metres, respectively. The bit error rate (BER) estimations of intensity modulation and direct detection (IM/DD) FSO links in the presence of weak atmospheric turbulence were also investigated for the identified locations during foggy weather; with the cities of Mafikeng and Kimberley showing the lowest BER performances because of their high wind velocities, altitudes and refractive index values. In order to obtain a BER of 10⁻⁶, receive signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) values ranging from ~46 to ~51 dB are required for FSO links deployed for data transmission in the various cities investigated in this work.