Impacts of environmental factors to bi-directional 2×40 Gb/s WDM free-space optical communication

Bi-directional short-range free-space optical (FSO) communication with bi-directional 2×4×10 Gb/s wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) channel signals is demonstrated by using a transmission distance of 25 m. The single-mode-fiber components are used in the optical terminals for both optical transmitting and receiving functions. The measured power penalties for the 25-m bi-directional four-channel FSO communication compared with the back-to-back link and uni-directional transmission system are less than 0.8 dB and 0.2 dB, respectively. The environmental factor effects, including the oblique incidence through the building window glasses, thermally induced non-uniform air index as well as rainfall on the FSO performance are investigated and analyzed. The experimental results show that rainfall is influential for free space optical transmission.