Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer and Communication Engineering 2008

May 13-15, 2008 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Effect of Weather Conditions on Quality of Free Space Optics Links (with focus on Malaysia)
Husagic Alma, Wajdi Al-Khateeb Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering International Islamic University Malaysia ahusagic@yahoo.com, wajdi@iiu.edu.my Abstract
Free Space Optics (FSO) is a promising optical technology that has a great chance to compliment the traditional wireless communications, through provision of high bandwidth, excellent security and reaching places where cable technology could never reach. Quality of FSO links however is greatly affected by weather conditions and link distance. Since there is no known analysis on the effect of weather conditions in Malaysia, this paper offers and attempt to analyze and simulate FSO links under typical local weather and terrain. The simulations under various weather conditions, ranging from light to heavy rain, clear weather to light and heavy haze, would help in determining system quality and design requirements, such as desired transmit power, receiver sensitivity, maximum range, etc. The quality analysis of the links in this paper is done in terms of BER, attenuation and link margin. I. INTRODUCTION link quality for FSO is much harder to achieve, mainly due to FSOs dependence on uncontrollable factors like weather and scintillation. II. QUALITY OF FSO LINK

Observing power at the receiver and calculating the link margin, one can determine factors that affect quality of the link. Link Margin (LM) [7], usually expressed in decibels, is a ratio of the received power and receiver threshold (s), or amount of power received above minimum detectable power:
LM = 10 log PR s

(1)

In order for signal to be recovered at the receivers side, its power must be higher than receiver sensibility or receiver threshold. Receiver threshold is usually given by manufacturer and it ranges from -20 to -40 dBm. Power at the receiver [1] can be expressed as:
PR = PT ARX L e ( l ) 2

(2)

The main problems in todays last mile solutions that are based on microwave communication technology are bandwidth limitations and security. FSO however offers solutions for all of these problems. Free Space Optics (FSO) is an optical technology that offers high-speed last-mile solution and has capabilities to be used for Quantum Key Distribution. FSO requires no licensing or frequency synchronization. It allows transmission of data with, theoretically unlimited bandwidth and thus represents a viable solution for the last-mile problem. FSO is also capable of providing secure communication of quantum keys, since, by nature, optical channel is very hard to intercept, but even if interception took place it can be easily detected due to photon misalignment. On the other hand, carrier-class

where: PR and PT are power at the receiver and transmitter respectively, ARX is receiver aperture area, divergence angle, atmospheric attenuation and L distance between transmitter and receiver. As shown in the equation (2), power at the receiver is directly proportional to the transmit power and receiver aperture area, but inversely proportional to the link range and divergence angle. Exponential part of the equation is related to atmospheric attenuation and it has the strongest influence on the link quality. Another factor that adds to attenuation of the signal is beam divergence. These factors are described as follows: A Atmospheric Attenuation Atmospheric attenuation happens when sent signal encounters with air molecules and other particles

978-1-4244-1692-9/08/$25.00 2008 IEEE

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suspended in the air (aerosols). As result, scattering, diffraction and/or absorption of the light occur, and signal power drops significantly. Atmospheric attenuation [2] can be expressed as: (3) where l is distance at which measurement occurred and is the specific attenuation coefficient per unit of length. The value of can be calculated using Kruse and Kim relations: q 3.912 (4)
V 550

and causes attenuation of 30 dB/km! Malaysia however is not influenced by fog, rather its main concern are heavy rain, haze and scintillation.

=e

where V is visibility (km), is wavelength (nm) and q is size distribution of diffusing particles. Different values for q are given by Kim and Kruse and they can be obtained in [2]. B Geometric Attenuation Another factor that adds to FSO link losses is geometric attenuation [1], which can be expressed as:
Att geo d RX = d + l TX
2

Figure 1. Geometric attenuation (dB) for link lengths of up to 10 km

(5)

where dTX and dRX are transmitter and receiver telescope diameters (cm), divergence angle (mrad) and L link distance (km). Divergence angle, transmitter and receiver aperture diameters are quantifiable parameters, and are usually specified by manufacturer. Geometric attenuation causes light beam to diverge as it moves throughout its propagation path. As a result, not all of the light beam would hit the receivers telescope, and some of the signal would be lost. Therefore, by increasing receiver aperture area, more light could be collected by the telescope and geometric loss would reduce. Figure 1 shows the geometric attenuation for distance up to 10 KM, transmit power of PT = 28.06 dBm and divergence angle of = 3mrad. Figure above shows that, as link distance increases, geometric attenuation also increases, and, for example, at the distance of 5 km, the geometric attenuation is about 36 dB. III. EFFECT OF ATMOSPHERIC CONDITIONS ON FSO LINKS

Rain Attenuation Rains in Malaysia appear throughout the year, but they peak during monsoon seasons, which falls on different months for different parts of Malaysia (east coast November, December and January; the northwestern region January, February, June and July; the southwest coastal area May to August and October and November; the rest of the Peninsula from October to November, and from April to May). According to [3], average rain intensity for Malaysia exceeding 0.01% of the year is 120 mm/hr, which yields attenuation of 28 dB/km. Therefore for carrier class signal (with availability of 99.99%) link length would be limited to only about 800 m [6]. Rain attenuation, with varying rain intensity is shown in Figure 2.

Visibility is one of the main factors which decide how far an FSO link can go. Visibility, as shown in equation (4), is influenced by atmospheric conditions, such as fog, snow, rain and haze. Fog, for example, consisting of tiny drops of water causes scattering and absorption of the sent optical signal. In conditions with moderate fog, visibility reduces to only about 500m

Figure 2. Rain attenuation (dB/km) for different rain intensity (mm/hr)

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Haze Attenuation According to data obtained from Malaysian Meteorological Department (MMD) [9], the air quality in Malaysia is generally good, yielding visibility of more than 10 km for most days of the year. Visibility reduces as a result of seasonal forest fires in parts of Malaysia and Sumatra, which form haze. If rain is delayed, haze can last for days, and sometimes even weeks. This happened in August 2005, when some parts of Malaysia were declared to be under the state of emergency due to high Air Pollution Index (API) (visibility was about 500m) [13]. Because of this haze must be considered as one of the important factors in FSO link design. Signal attenuation for light haze with visibility of 6 km is about 0.7 dB/km, and attenuation for heavy haze with visibility of about 1 km is almost 9.8 dB/km (Figure 3).

Malaysia: clear weather, light haze, haze, moderate rain and heavy rain. Receiver sensitivity was chosen to be -20 dBm (0.01 mW) and transceivers thermal losses were set to 5 dB. Scintillation was ignored for cases with haze and rain.

Figure 4. Link margin for different weather conditions

Figure 3. Attenuation due to haze for different visibility

Scintillation Although rain and haze are accountable for most of atmospheric losses in Malaysia, a small amount of scintillation loss also affects the channel quality. Scintillation appears during hot and sunny days when air pockets with different refraction index develop, causing beam intensity to vary unpredictably. For Malaysia, scintillation index is below 0.3 for most of the year, although in some months (Sept-Oct and Feb-Apr) it goes beyond 0.6 [11]. Scintillation can cause attenuation of up to 12 dB [4]. IV. SIMULATION ANALYSIS

First line shows link margin for clear weather with V > 10km and attenuation of 1 dB/km. Margin of 1 dB/km was set as loss due to scintillation. The link length here can reach maximum of 10.8 km. For visibility of V = 3km, which, according to [5] is moderate haze, maximum achievable link length is 5.5 km. After 5.5 km link margin would drop and signal could not be recovered. In heavy haze however, where visibility is 1.3 km, signal could be successfully recovered for link length below 3 km. Moderate rain with intensity of 48 mm/h limits the link length to 2 km, while in heavy rain condition (intensity of 120 mm/hr) signal would be completely lost only after 1.2km. Another important factor in determining the quality of the link is BER. BER shows how many, out of the total received bits are at error. For simulation of BER following parameters were used: = 1550 nm, dTX = dRX = 0.2 m, PTX = 640mW (28 dBm), = 3 mrad and scintillation index of 0.5.

Link margin is a ratio of the received power and receiver threshold and it therefore considers all factors that attenuate the signal, divergence, atmosphere, transceivers thermal losses and others. Figure 4 shows Link margin for different weather conditions in

Figure 5. BER for link length of 10km

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Figure 5 shows BER for clear weather and haze over link of 10 km. During clear weather, with attenuation below 5 dB (0.5 dB/km), the BER was below 1090. As attenuation increases to 10 dB (1 dB/km), BER rises to 109 which means that there is 1 error every 1 Gbit of received data. 1dB/km can be considered as a case with light haze. In the case with moderate haze, attenuation would be 18-20 dB (1.8-2 dB/km), and signal would experience BER of 0.1. The BER here is very high because the link length is 10 km, and, as shown Figure 4, in conditions with haze, link length can not reach more than 5 km. Case with 1 km link length is shown in Figure 6. For simulation of BER shown in Figure 6 however, 12 dBm transmit power was used in stead of 28 dBm (Figure 5). This is because for 1 km link and power of 28 dBm, system experiences saturation and simulation results become inaccurate. This is due to limitation of simulator used.

be about 14 dB/km, which yields BER of 10 9. Figure 7 shows the BER for heavy rain with intensity above 100 mm/hr. This can be considered as the worst case scenario, because the BER for the link of 1 km is between 0.01 and 0.1, which means that the system produces 1 error every 10 or 100 bits, depending on the rain intensity (for 120 mm/h, Att = 28 dB/km, BER = 0.08). These simulation results are also logical, since visibility for rain of 100 mm/h is only 770m [6]. V. CONCLUSION

Free Space Optic offers solutions for current bottlenecks in communication technology; however it does not come for free. The cost we have to pay is huge attenuation of the signal power, mainly caused by non-quantifiable factors, like weather conditions. In Malaysia, main limiting factors for FSO link design are rain and haze. Seasonal heavy rains cause very high BER, and they limit maximum link length to 1km. Haze attenuation does affect the quality of FSO link, adding attenuation of up to 7 dB/km, however it does not introduce high BER for distances below 5 km. In order to improve link quality and system availability, atmospheric attenuation must be compensated in some other way. One of the feasible solutions would be hybrid FSO-RF communication technology, where the speed and ease of installation of FSO would be combined with better weather resistance and reliability of RF links. REFERENCES
Bloom, S.et al. Understanding the performance of Free Space Optics, Journal of Optical Networking, April 2003 [2] M. Al Nabousi, et al. Propagation of Optical and Infrared waves in the atmosphere, SPIE Journal, 2003 [3] International Telecommunication Union, Recommendation ITUR P.837- 4, Characteristics of precipitation for propagation modeling, 2003. [4] J.T. Ong,K.I. Timothy, J.H. Chong, and S.V.B. Rao, Heavy Rain Effects on the Propagation of Free Space Optical Links in Singapore, Twelfth International Conference on Antennas and Propagation 2003 (ICAP 2003), 2003, Vol 1, pp. 365- 368 [5] Bloom, S. The Physics of Free-Space Optics. AirFiber, Inc. 2002. [6] Kim, I.I. & Korevaar, E. Availability of Free Space Optics (FSO) and hybrid FSO/RF systems. Optical Access Incorporated, San Diego, USA. 2003 [7] Defining a Common Standard for Evaluating and Comparing Free-Space Optical Products. fSona Communication Corporation. 2005 [8] G. Shaulov, J. Patel, B. Whitlock, P. Mena, R. Scarmozzino, Simulation-Assisted Design of Free Space Optical Transmission Systems, RSoft Design Group, http://www.rsoftdesign.com [9] Malaysian Meteorological Department Website, http://www.met.gov.my [10] M.S.J. Singh, S.I. Syed Hassan, and M.F. Ain, Rainfall Attenuation and Rainfall Rate Measurements in Malaysia, [1]

Figure 6. BER for link length of 1km

Figure 7. BER for link with heavy rain (L=1km)

In the case of rain, the visibility decreases depending on the rain intensity, and for moderate rain, with intensity of about 48 mm/h, the attenuation would

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Comparison with Prediction Models, American Journal of Applied Sciences 4, Science Publications, 2007, pp. 5-7 [11] A. F. Mohd. Zain, H. Y. Hwa, M. Abdullah, Z. A. Rhazali, S. Abdullah and M. F. Marsimin, First Ionospheric Experimental Campaign and Observation at Frasers Hill, Malaysia: Total Electron Content (TEC) and Scintillation Measurements,

Proceedings of Asia-Pacific Conference on Applied Electromagnetics, 2005, Johor Bahru, Malaysia. [12] S. Nazari, Free Space Optics Links (FSO) and Hybrid FSO/Systems (the Availability Analysis), Unpublished thesis, IIUM 2007. [13] Haze Watch Website, http://www.haze-online.or.id/

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