The explosive rise of wireless services necessitates a network connection with high bandwidth, high performance, low mistakes, and adequate channel capacity. Individual mobile users, as well as residential and business clusters are increasingly using the internet and multimedia services, resulting in massive increases in the internet traffic demand. Over the past decade, internet traffic has grown significantly faster than Moore’s law predicted. The current system is facing significant radio frequency spectrum congestion and is unable to successfully transmit growing amounts of (available) data to end users while keeping acceptable delay values in mind. Free space optics is a viable alternative to the current radio frequency technology. This technology has a few advantages, including fast data speeds, unrestricted bandwidth, and excellent security. Since free space optics is invisible to traffic type and data protocol, it may be quickly reliably and profitably integrated into an existing access network. Despite the undeniable benefits of free space optics technology under excellent channel conditions and its wide range of applications, its broad use is hampered by its low link dependability, especially over long distances, caused by atmospheric turbulence-induced decay and weather sensitivity. The best plausible solution is to establish a secondary channel link in the GHz frequency range that works in tandem with the primary free space optics link. A hybrid system that combines free space optics and millimeter wave technologies in this research is presented. The combined system offers a definitive backhaul maintenance, by drastically improving the link range and service availability.

The article presents state of work in technology of free-space optical communications (Free Space Optics − FSO). Both commercially available optical data links and their further development are described. The main elements and operation limiting factors of FSO systems have been identified. Additionally, analyses of FSO/RF hybrid systems application are included. The main aspects of LasBITer project related to such hybrid technology for security and defence applications are presented.

The paper presents verification of a peak detection method cooperating with infrared radiation detector module applications. The work has been divided into parts including SPICE simulations and presentation of results obtained with the constructed prototype. The design of the peak detector dedicated to applications with very short pulses requires a different approach than that for standard solutions. It is mainly caused due to the ratio of pulse width and time period. In the described application this ratio is less than 10%. The paper shows testing of an analogue circuit which is capable to be inserted in these applications.

Local weather conditions have an impact on the availability of free-space optical (FSO) communication. The variation in meteorological parameters, such as temperature, humidity, and wind speed, leads to variations of the refractive index along the transmission path. These refractive index inhomogeneities produced by atmospheric turbulence induce optical turbulence which is responsible for random fluctuations in the intensity of the laser beam that carries the signal (irradiance) called scintillations that can significantly degrade the performance of FSO systems. This paper aims to investigate the feasibility of deploying FSO communication technology under scintillation effects in any urban region and atmospheric environment. To achieve that, firstly by utilizing the Hufnagel-Vally day with the Sadot and Kopeika models together, the scintillation strength for a specified region, Sulaimani City in north-eastern Iraq as an example, has been estimated through the calculation of the refractive index structure parameter (Cn2) over a period of 10 years and it was found to be at the strong turbulence level. Secondly, from the same estimated parameter, the scintillation attenuation of the signal carrying the laser beam intensity can be calculated to investigate the feasibility of FSO communication using Optysistem-7 software. The optimal link distance for north-eastern Iraq (Sulaimani City) has been found to be within the limit of about 5.5 km. Analysing the max. Q-factor, bit-error rate and signal to noise ratio for an average of 120 months between 2013–2022 assessed the best and worst seasons for FSO.

An indoor localization system is proposed based on visible light communications, received signal strength, and machine learning algorithms. To acquire an accurate localization system, first, a dataset is collected. The dataset is then used with various machine learning algorithms for training purpose. Several evaluation metrics are used to estimate the robustness of the proposed system. Specifically, authors’ evaluation parameters are based on training time, testing time, classification accuracy, area under curve, F1-score, precision, recall, logloss, and specificity. It turned out that the proposed system is featured with high accuracy. The authors are able to achieve 99.5% for area under curve, 99.4% for classification accuracy, precision, F1, and recall. The logloss and precision are 4% and 99.7%, respectively. Moreover, root mean square error is used as an additional performance evaluation averaged to 0.136 cm.

The welcome and adaptation of optical wireless technology by the modern era has brought forward the concept of an inter-satellite free-space optical communication system. In the present work, I study the combined effect of selection of different operating wavelengths and detector types along with the pointing errors at the transmitter and receiver side on the performance of an inter-satellite free-space optical link. The link performance has been optimized by measuring and analyzing the bit error rate and quality-factor of received signal under different scenarios. Performance of the inter-satellite link has also been investigated considering different modulation formats and data rates for LEO and MEO distances.

This paper presents some construction analysis and test results of a Free Space Optics system operating at the wavelength of 9.35 μm. In the system, a quantum cascade laser and a photoreceiver with mercury cadmium telluride photodetectors were used. The main parameters of these elements were discussed taking into account a data link operation. It also provides to determine a data range for various weather conditions related to scattering and scintillation. The results of numerical analyses defined the properties of currently available FSO technologies working in the near infrared or in the short infrared range of spectrum versus the performances of the developed system. The operation of this system was verified in three different test environments. The obtained results may also contain important issues related to the practical application of any FSO system.

The performance of free-space optical (FSO) communications that using an optical amplifier (OA) in the scheme of an amplify-received (AR)-relaying has a major drawback in the detection of input signal quality under the effects of turbulence. As an OA is based on a fiber-detection (FD) method to receive and delivers a signal at the amplification process stage, there is an opportunity to implement an optical spatial filter (OSF) to improve the quality of an input signal. In this paper, as the continuation of previous work on the direct-detection, the OSF is applied on the AR-relaying. The novelty proposed in this work is the improvement of FD method where the OSF is designed as the integration of cone reflector, pinhole and multi-mode fiber with an OA. The OSF produces an optical signal, the input of the OA, which minimizes the effects of turbulence, background noise and signal fluctuation. Thus, OA in AR-relaying produces signal output with high power and rise up below threshold level. Additionally, an OSF with a lower pinhole diameter produces the best quality of the signal spectral to be delivered into an EDFA. Through this implementation, the performance of optical relaying on FSO can be significantly improved.

The paper presents a new construction of an optical pulse amplitude monitoring unit (PAMU) used in a transceiver of Free Space Optics. It consists of a buffer, constant fraction discriminator (CFD), delay line, and a sample and hold (S&H) circuit. In the design FSO system, the PAMU provides to monitor transmitted and received optical pulses with duration of few ns. Using this device, there is no need to apply complicated and expensive digitizing systems. The unique aspect of its construction is to control S&H circuit using the CFD. The lab model of this unit allows to perform tests to define some virtues of constant fraction and leading-edge discriminators. The results were implemented in optical signal monitoring of FSO system. The unit was prepared to cooperate with two different detection modules. Using this setup, it was possible, e.g. to determine operation characteristics of FSO transmitter, identify interruption of transmission, and control light power to provide high safety of work.

The paper is a review of analog and digital electronics dedicated to monitor nanosecond pulses. Choosing the optimal peak detector construction depends on many factors for example precision, complexity, or costs. The work shows some virtues and limitations of selected peak detection methods, for example standard peak detector with rectifier, sample and hold circuit with triggering units and ADC fast acquisition. However, the main attention is paid to problems of results from effective triggering signal for sample and hold operation. The obtained results allow for designing a peak detector construction as an alternative for costly and very complex fast acquisition systems based on ADC and FPGA technologies.

This paper investigates the differential binary modulation for decode-and-forward (DF) based relay-assisted free space optical (FSO) network under the effect of strong atmospheric turbulence together with misalignment error (ME). The atmospheric fading links experience K-distributed turbulence. First we derive novel closed form expression for average bit error rate (BER) and outage probability (OP) in terms of Meijer’s G function. Further, the OP of differential DF-FSO system with multiple relays is derived. We also analyze the asymptotic performance for the sake of getting the order of diversity and the coding gain. The power allotment term is utilized to examine the effect of different power allotment techniques on BER and OP. The simulation results have been used to validate the derived analytical results.