Experimental Investigation of FSO Systems under the Effect of Atmospheric Turbulence, Heat, and Fog

Free space optical (FSO) communication systems are a promising candidate for beyond-5G (B5G) wireless communication systems because of their merits, such as high data rate, huge bandwidth, low latency, less power consumption, and no electromagnetic interference. In this paper, we develop the experimental setup of a 10 Gigabits/second (Gb/s) FSO communication system in a laboratory controlled environment. An atmospheric turbulence chamber is designed for introducing the effects of turbulence and fog to the transmitted signal. We experimentally evaluate the bit error rate (BER) and the received power profile fluctuations under various conditions such as with and without turbulence. Further, we also demonstrate the effect of heat and fog on the received power profile. Additionally, we exemplify the role of cyclic redundancy check (CRC) to mitigate the deteriorating effects of atmospheric conditions on the FSO link.