FSO Communication: Benefits, Challenges, and its Analysis in DWDM Communication System

Free-space optical (FSO) communication is one of the choices of researchers for most of the bandwidth hungry applications in evolving networks where the deployment of optical fiber is not directly possible as a transmission medium. In this research article, benefits, challenges, applications, and role of FSO is discussed in detail for evolving networks. Further, performance of FSO communication system is tested using four channels of dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM). Various simulations are performed on FSO including different weather conditions, that directly affect the link performance. Many important parameters such as distance, data rate, bit error rate, transmitter power, and attenuation under different weather conditions are tested in this research work. The operation of FSO communication system is carried out in the range 760-850 nm where equal channel spacing is considered for the working of DWDM communication system. Moreover, a fair comparison of proposed system is also presented for its operation in two more bands i.e. C and L-band, to show which one offers better performance. Simulation are performed in Optisystem 14.0 and MATLAB. For the analysis of proposed system, results are presented in the form of BER and Q-factor plots.