Mitigating zenith angle limitations on spatial free space optical transmission link

Abstract : Free space optical systems are potential candidates of large band spatial transmission solutions. This article investigates on the impact of relays to mitigate the zenith angle in the performance of a Free Space Optical (FSO) transmission. The high earth orbit communication channel has been approximated by considering the complexity of the atmosphere in two layers. The influence of zenith angle on the quality of the link has been evaluated. Appropriate network architecture scheme has been proposed. It is shown that it is possible to get a BER of 10-5 even when a zenith angle of 76.1° is considered.