Experimental Investigation of Availability in a 4.6 km Terrestrial Urban Coherent Free-Space Optical Communications Link

TL;DR

This study experimentally assesses the availability and fading effects of a 4.6 km urban free-space optical link, demonstrating high reliability with over 92% availability including slow fades, crucial for high-speed optical communications.

Contribution

It provides empirical data on outage probability and fading effects in urban free-space optical links over an extended period.

Findings

Link availability of 92% including slow fades

High-speed transmission of 500 Gb/s achieved

Identification of slow and fast fading effects

Abstract

We measured the outage probability of a 4.6-km urban free-space optical communication link over six days. High-speed power measurements reveal slow and fast fading effects, with link availabilities of 92% including and 99% excluding slow fades for 500 Gb/s transmission.