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1, 2011

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Next Generation Free Space Optics System for Ubiquitous

Communications
Pham Tien Dat1 , Chedlia Ben Naila1 , Peng Liu1 , Kazuhiko Wakamori1 ,
Mitsuji Matsumoto1 , and Katsutoshi Tsukamoto2
1

GITS/GITI, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan

Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan

Abstract Free Space Optics (FSO) is being realized as an alternative means to compensate
and/or replace the traditional optical communications in many applications where the fiber cable
is not available. The next generation FSO systems in which the propagated signal after transmission over freespace is directly coupled into a single mode fiber have attracted much interest
recently. However, the system performance is highly affected by the atmospheric environment,
especially the atmospheric turbulence due to the random change in the air temperature and pressure. In this paper, we present the propagation characteristics of a newly developed Radio on
FSO (RoFSO) system based on next generation FSO technology capable of transparent transmission of multiple wireless signals under effects of atmosphere turbulence. The system performance
enhancement using atmospheric turbulence mitigation techniques will also be outlined.
1. INTRODUCTION

Light-wave communications has been become an attractive means for broadband wireless access
networks. Recently, there is much attention in Free Space Optics (FSO) systems to provide broadband communications due to its remarkable advantages including flexibility, easy-to-install, and
license-free. FSO systems can be categorized in 2 broad groups, i.e., conventional FSO based systems, and next generation FSO based systems. Conventional FSO systems operates at 800 nm
wavelength band, and needs to use O/E and E/O conversions before emitting/coupling optical
signals from/into an optical fiber. They have been used for signal transmission, but due to power
and bandwidth limitation of optical devices in this wavelength band, it is not possible to operate
above 2.5 Gbps [1].
Next generation FSO technology has been developed in order to overcome the limitation of the
conventional FSO systems. Unlike conventional FSO systems, in the next generation FSO systems
the necessity of converting the signal from electrical to optical and vice versa before transmitting or
receiving through free space is eliminated. In this configuration the signal is emitted directly to freespace from the fiber termination point and at the receiving end focused directly into the fiber core.
Therefore, a protocol and data rate transparent FSO link is achieved. The seamless interconnection
of standard single mode fiber (SMF) and FSO links, whereby an optical signal is coupled from one
media to another without any optical-electrical conversions, creates an opportunity for cost savings
and other remarkable advantages. However, atmosphere has many deleterious effects on the system
performance especially atmospheric turbulence which makes the received signal fluctuate randomly.
The system thus needs specially designed terminals and tracking scheme.
Recently, based on a previously developed next generation FSO system [2], we developed and
demonstrated successfully an advanced Radio on FSO (RoFSO) system capable of transferring
multiple wireless signals using WDM FSO channel [3]. In this paper, we present the propagation
characteristics of this new system and compare to that of a conventional FSO system co-located
in the experiment field. The newly derived characteristics will be helpful in the system evaluation
and its further optimization. We also outline some methods to improve the system performance
using different kinds of diversity.
2. CONVENTIONAL FSO AND ROFSO SYSTEMS CHARACTERISTICS
2.1. Experimental Set up

The experimental set up for characterizing optical and wireless signal transmission of the RoFSO
systems is illustrated in Fig. 1. Two RoFSO antennas are installed on the rooftops of two buildings
at Waseda University campus in Tokyo. The transmission distance is about 1 km. Co-located on the

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FSO
antenna

76

FSO
antenna

RoFSO
antenna
1km
3dB
coupler

RoFSO
antenna

Optical IF-unit

Optical IF-unit
Optical
SA
Power
Meter

E/O

RF-IF-unit

3GPP
SA

O/E

RF-IF-unit

RX
BERT

TX
BERT
3GPP/WLAN
ISDB-T SAs

WLAN-AP

PC
Bldg. 55S Okubo campus

3GPP
SG

3GPP/WLAN
WLAN-AP
ISDB-T SGs
Application
experiment
PC
Bldg. 14 Nishiwaseda campus

Figure 1: Experimental setup diagram.

Table 1: Conventional FSO and RoFSO systems specifications.
Parameters
Communication wavelength
Antenna aperture
Beam divergence
Tracking method

Conventional FSO
785 nm
80 mm
0.75 mrad
Auto tracking

RoFSO
1550 nm band
80 mm
47.3 rad
Rough, Fine tracking

rooftops is a conventional FSO system. A weather measurement device for recording temperature,
rain rate and visibility data is also available. In this paper we focus on the optical propagation
characteristics of the system under effects of atmospheric turbulence and coupling fading, and
compare to that of a conventional FSO system. Details of the experimental set up for wireless
signals transmission over the RoFSO system can be referred to [3]. The specifications of these two
systems are shown in Table 1.
2.2. Conventional FSO and RoFSO Systems Characteristics

In a conventional FSO system, the signal is emitted from transmitting antenna in a very large
beam divergence, and at the receiver the beam is detected by a photodetector which has a size of
about 500 m, therefore there is almost no coupling loss between free-space and detector. On the
contrary, in a next generation FSO system, the tracking scheme plays an important role in focusing
the received signal into a SMF. An example of received optical power in the RoFSO system (when
the tracking is ON and OFF) and in the conventional FSO system measured at 15 : 30 pm, 21
January 2009 is shown in Fig. 2(a). Fig. 2(b) shows the power spectrum characteristics. The data
is recorded within 3 seconds with a sampling rate of 10 kHz. It can be observed that the tracking
capability of the Fine Pointing Mirror manages to control and steer most of the received light into
the SMF. The power fluctuations observed when the tracking is switched to OFF are remarkably
suppressed and improvement in the fiber received power is realized. However, compared to that of
the conventional system, the fluctuations of received power in the RoFSO system is larger. This
can be explained that even though the tracking scheme can significantly enhance the received signal
level, it cannot suppress completely the random change in the position of the coming signal due to
the effect of angle of arrival. This can be observed more clearly by the power spectrum property
in Fig. 2(b).
In a system characterized by the random change in the received level like FSO communications,
using statistical models like probability density function (PDF) is the good methods to represent the
system property. There are many research works conducted so far both in theory and experiment
to find out the appropriate models for FSO systems. Among these models, log-normal, Gamma-

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Normalized Power

Frequency (Hz)

Figure 2: (a)Time series received power in SMF and (b) power spectrum characteristics.

Figure 3: (a) PDF of received power in the RoFSO and (b) comparison to the FSO system.

Gamma and Gamma are widely used and have been demonstrated to present approximately the
behavior of a FSO beam under effects of atmospheric turbulence [4]. However, these models were
developed for conventional FSO systems taking only the impact of turbulence on the transmission
path into account. For next generation FSO systems, besides this effect, the systems are impacted
by an additional coupling fading. Unfortunately, there is no research work so far considering the
combined effects for these systems. An example of received power distribution in the RoFSO
system is shown in Fig. 3(a). The fitting curves using lognormal, Gamma and Gamma-Gamma
PDF are also shown. It is seen that unlike conventional FSO systems, Gamma function (Eq. (1))
presents the closest property to the RoFSO system. Fig. 3(b) shows a comparison of received
power distributions in the conventional FSO and RoFSO systems. We can see that Gamma PDF
can relatively characterize both systems behavior, however, the variance of these distributions is
different. The parameter determining the variance of a Gamma PDF is power scintillation index,
as shown in Eq. (2) [5]
x1 ex/
pX (x) =
(1)
()
where () is gamma function, and the parameters and are related to measured values by
= P2
1
= 2
P
where P2 is power scintillation index and in the conventional FSO systems, it relates to scintillation
at the receiver plane by [4],
(
)
2 (1 + 0.69 12/5 )5/6
2
0.51R
0.49R
2
R
P -F SO = exp
+
1
(2)
12/5
12/5
(1 + 0.65d2 + 1.11R )7/6 (1 + 0.9d2 + 0.62d2 R )7/6

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Figure 4: Relation between scintillation index of FSO and RoFSO systems (a) and their CDF (b).

p
2 = 1.23k 7/6 L11/6 C 2 is Rytov variance parameter and d =
where R
kD2 /4L is the ratio of the
n
aperture radius to the Fresnel zone size, D is receiver aperture diameter.
In next generation FSO systems, the power scintillation index not only reflects scintillation but
also depicts the coupling fading at the terminal. A relation of power scintillation index of the FSO
and RoFSO systems for the data measured in 5 clear days is shown in Fig. 4(a). The statistics for
the data using cumulative distribution function (CDF) is also shown in Fig. 4(b). It is observed
that due to the added coupling fading, scintillation index in the RoFSO system varies in a larger
range compared to that in the FSO system. Under moderate to strong turbulence conditions, power
scintillation index of the RoFSO system can be derived as
P2 -RoF SO = P2 -F SO +

(3)

where is an additional factor presenting coupling fading. From our experimental data, we can
estimate the value for this factor of about 0.4 for the condition from which more than 99% of power
scintillation index is less than (Fig. 4(b)).
It is important to note that even though the newly developed system based on next generation
FSO technology is affected by a larger fading compared to the conventional one, it can manage to
provide a stable connection for heterogeneous wireless signals over 1 km transmission, especially in
the absence of severe weather conditions like strong turbulence and heavy rain [3]. The derived
characteristics shown in this part will be helpful for the system modeling, theoretical evaluation and
its further optimization as well as enhancement. Next session will describe some possible techniques
that can be employed to further improve the system performance using the model derived in this
part.

Figure 5: RoFSO system enhancement using (a) reception diversity, (b) time diversity.

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3. SYSTEM PERFORMANCE ENHANCEMENT

To improve the performance and increase the availability, FSO as well as next generation FSO
systems can employ other atmospheric turbulence mitigation techniques such as forward error
coding (FEC), high power and bandwidth efficiency modulations, transmitting signal at different
times (time diversity) or using multiple transmitters and/or receivers (space diversity). In this
part we give some examples of system performance enhancement using receiver diversity and time
diversity. In the former method, the optical signal is transmitted by one transmitter antenna but at
receiving site, multiple receivers are used to collect the data. The output signal is the combination
of different received signals using one of the processing methods like equal gain combining (EGC),
maximum ratio combining (MRC) or select best combining (SBC). In next generation FSO systems,
thank to the use of direct coupling at the receiver, the received signals can be combined optically,
the combined signal then is transferred through a pre-amplifier before detected by a photodetector.
Multiple receivers in this case are sets of receiving aperture and coupling scheme to couple received
signal into fiber core. As depicted in the previous session, the power fluctuations in the fiber
core of each signal can be modeled by the modified Gamma PDF with power scintillation index
is derived from the strength of scintillation and coupling fading factor. An example of system
performance using receiver diversity is shown in Fig. 5(a). In this example we take the parameters
of the RoFSO system into calculation with the gain value of pre-amplifier is 20 dB. We consider
the impact of scintillation and coupling fading at the receiver by using the modified Gamma PDF
function as presented in Session 2. We assume that the optical power from different apertures
and couplers can be combined equally using for example optical coupler. The distribution of the
combined optical power after optical coupler is not a single model any more but a series of Gamma
function [6]. We also take different noise sources including thermal noise, shot noise and especially
pre-amplifier produced noises into consideration. It is clear that the system performance is improved
significantly when multiple receivers are employed. The performance also depends on the distance
between receivers, when the distance is large there is no correlation between the receivers fading so
the performance is better. If the distance is small, the fading between receivers correlates resulting
in performance reduction.
In time diversity solution, a signal is transmitted many times using one pair of transmitter and
receiver, and at the receiving site different signals transmitted at different times are synchronized
and combined. There are many methods to implement time diversity in FSO communications
regarding the way to differentiate different signals. We proposed a new time diversity for FSO
systems using OCDMA code [7]. The optical signal at the transmitting site is divided into many
branches, each branch is coded by a OCDMA code and delayed by a time period. The signals
then are combined before transmitting over FSO channel, and at the receiving site are inversely
synchronized, decoded and combined again. An example of system performance using this solution
in which the signal is transmitted two times is shown in Fig. 5(b). The method demonstrates a
good improvement for the system especially when atmospheric turbulence increases.
4. CONCLUSION

We have presented a study and characterization on the performance of a next generation FSO
system under effects of atmospheric turbulence and coupling fading. We verified that the system
is affected by an additional fading due to direct coupling between free-space and SMF, and a
distribution model is derived to describe the system behavior using Gamma function and newly
derived power scintillation index. Even though the system is affected by a larger fading, it has
been demonstrated previously that it can maintain a stable connection for various wireless signal
transmission, especially in the absence of severe weather conditions. The information derived in
this paper will be helpful in the system modeling, theoretical evaluation and further optimization.
The system performance improvement using receiver diversity and time diversity is also presented.
It is shown that a significant enhancement in system performance can be obtained by using one of
these solutions, especially when the atmospheric turbulence is strong.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This work is supported in part by a Grant-in-aid of High-tech Research Center Project by the
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan.

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