Line-of-sight stability in unmanned aerial vehicle relays for hybrid free-space optical and visible light communication links under atmospheric effects
Maha Sliti, Salman Ghafoor, Sarra Ayouni, Manel Mrabet, Lassaad Ben Ammar, Muhammad Ijaz
TL;DR
This paper proposes a hybrid free-space optical and visible light communication system using a drone to maintain stable high-speed communication despite weather and movement challenges.
Contribution
The paper introduces a hybrid FSO/VLC UAV relay and a unified analytical model for stability under atmospheric effects.
Findings
The FSO branch retains significant power under desert dust and haze conditions.
The VLC branch maintains high SNR at low altitudes with limited field of view.
Stabilization below 10 μrad is critical for high alignment probability in hybrid relays.
Abstract
Optical links supported by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) must sustain gigabit-class throughput despite atmospheric attenuation, turbulence, and platform-induced pointing errors. Single-technology designs based on free-space optical (FSO) or visible light communication (VLC) often lack robustness under changing altitude and weather conditions. This paper proposes a hybrid FSO/VLC UAV relay and a unified analytical model that combines Beer–Lambert path loss, turbulence-induced scintillation, and pointing jitter, coupling an FSO backhaul to a Lambertian V1LC access channel with a finite receiver field of view (FOV). MATLAB-based results show that, under light desert dust (extinction κ≈0.35 km−1), the FSO branch retains ≈70.5% of the transmitted power at 1 km and ≈49.7% at 2 km, compared to ≈81.9% and ≈67.0% in clear visibility (κ=0.2 km−1) and ≈49.7% and ≈24.7% in haze (κ=0.7 km−1). The…
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Taxonomy
TopicsOptical Wireless Communication Technologies · UAV Applications and Optimization · Satellite Communication Systems