Investigation on Pointing Error in Multi-Beam Free Space Optical Communication System
AbstractFree space optical (FSO) communication has fascinated a lot of attention for a variety of applications in telecommunication area. It is dream of every researcher and telecommunication society to make it a real alternative solution for the last mile problem, to replace fiber optics. FSO is much favored because of its low maintenance cost and deployment time. Pointing error is one of the main challenges in FSO communication system which affects its performance especially at high data links that leads to significant performance degradation. In this paper, the impact of pointing error for multi-beam Hybrid Wavelength Division Multiplexing (HWDM) FSO system is investigated. Then the effect of link distance and Bit Error Rate (BER) are estimated by accounting the pointing error and atmospheric attenuation. The effect of change of link distance is examined while changing the number of beams between the transmitter and receiver as well. In this attempt, the HWDM system is considered by combining eight Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) channels and four Coarse Wavelength Division Multiplexing (CWDM) channels. In addition, the influences of BER and receiver sensitivity are analyzed for the proposed system by incorporating Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifier (EDFA) at the receiver end. The data rate 2.5 Gbps is considered for both CWDM and DWDM channels for investigation.