Performance enhancement of multi channel multi beam FSO communication link with the application of Reed Solomon codes

Abstract

The rising user needs for high speed applications and services have necessitated the requirement of a communication link that can provide the data rate comparable to optical fiber. Free Space Optical (FSO) Communication is an admired means of communication from past few years. To achieve seamless and error free transmission at high speed for heterogeneous multimedia applications at desired bit rates, novel advancements in optical communication technology are being explored along with FSO. However, several constraints such as atmospheric turbulence, uneven terrain, dynamic climatic conditions cause several nonlinearities which limit the connectivity. In this work, a multi channel multi beam FSO communication system by incorporating Reed Solomon (RS) Codes has been proposed at 30 Gbps. The Modified Gamma-Gamma model is being applied for channel turbulences. The application of Forward Error Correction (FEC) coding in the designed system offers ease of error detection and correction with improved performance at higher data rate for implementation over longer link lengths.The system performance has been evaluated for (i) Number of errors corrected, (ii) Bit Error Rate (BER), (iii) Received power, (iv) Geometric path losses and (v) Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR). At an acceptable BER of 10–9, the RS (255, 127, 129) encoded Four channel Four beam FSO communication link is effectively implemented for a distance of 3500 m with − 32.5 dBm received low optical power and 25 dB SNR.