Results of an optical wireless ground link experiment in continental fog and dry snow conditions

High-bandwidth optical wireless transmission links are of prime importance and have tremendous potential to serve for the next generation optical access networks. Currently optical wireless or Free Space Optics (FSO) communication products supporting data rates over 1 Gbps are available from several communication equipment manufacturers. One obvious accompanying disadvantage of this technology comes from its transmitted optical beam interaction with the earth atmosphere. Notably high attenuation are inflicted by fog, clouds and snow conditions, that result in substantial loss of optical signal power over the communication channel. We provide here a statistical analysis of our measured optical attenuations for continental fog and dry snow conditions for an FSO ground-link installed at Graz, Austria.

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