Hybrid FSO Radio (HFR): Some Preliminary Results

AirFiber's Hybrid Free Space Optics Radio (HFR) provides greater than 1 km range at 99.999% availability. The HFR does this by hitlessly combining the data streams from two data paths, one a free space optic (FSO), the other a 60 GHz millimeter wave system. FSO systems alone are limited in range to less than 500 meters in most cities in the world due to fog outages yet have modest attenuation in rain. Fog is transparent to 60 GHz systems yet they suffer from rain and clear air oxygen absorption. The HFR system uses the strengths of each of these very high bandwidth (up to 1.25 Gb/sec), unlicensed technologies, to provide 99.999% wireless availability at ranges greater than 1 km in all weather conditions. We present some range curves and data from the output of an AirFiber HFR system during a severe (300 dB/km) fog event of many hours duration.