IET Communications

Review Article

Historical perspective of free space optical ISSN 1751-8628

Received on 13th January 2019
Revised 28th June 2019
communications: from the early dates to Accepted on 31st July 2019
E-First on 28th August 2019
today's developments doi: 10.1049/iet-com.2019.0051
www.ietdl.org

Arockia Bazil Raj1 , Arun K. Majumder2

1Defence Institute of Advanced Technology, Pune, India
2Colorado State University-Pueblo, California, USA
E-mail: brazilraj.a@diat.ac.in

Abstract: This survey article discusses the revolutions of wireless communication technologies right from the prehistoric man's
fire signals to today's space optical communications. A brief description of evaluations of communication technologies from the
ancient Greece to today's mature telecommunication fields is discussed in this review paper. Principle, significance,
demonstration and development of free space optical (FSO) communication technology over different decades are discussed.
Major FSO channel limitations, temporal and spatial challenges of FSO communication system and their state-of-art mitigation
techniques are presented. Classical quantitative analysis of reliability of FSO communication, developments on radio over FSO
(RoFSO) and hybrid FSO/RF systems are also explained. Advanced developments of FSO communication techniques such as
optical free space wavelength division multiplexing (WDM), sub-carrier multiplexing (SCM), worldwide interoperability for
microwave access (WiMAX), visible light communications (VLC) and vehicular visible light communications (VVLC) are
reported. Deep space optical communication systems and next generation FSO wireless terrestrial/global network architecture
are summarised. Research challenges of FSO systems for internet of things/everything (IoT/IoE), 5G communication, mobile-
network, terahertz spectrum, quantum communication and underwater optical applications are presented. Based on the review,
we outlined the challenges that need to be addressed in near-future researches to realize full potential FSO communication
systems.

1 History of telecommunication technology
Origination of today's telecommunication has an age-long
technique that is being continuously evolved and used for
transferring information to connect distant points for several
purposes. The ability to transfer information precisely and
efficiently in a possible short time has always been one of the
primary needs that still drive the researches on telecommunication
to have an ultimate requirement of human life modernisation. From
the day of prehistoric mans’ fire signal to today's smart-phone, the
communication technologies have evolved with multiple
dimensional changes, advancements and still residue as the main
research area to fulfil the growing requirements [1]. Prehistoric
man used fire/smoke signals and drum sounds to transfer
information within a limited geographic area. These signals and
sounds passed a very simple as well as a set of predefined
messages such as safe, danger or victory as an alarm in order to
alert the prehistoric clans. This kind of alert system has evolved
over the centuries and reached today's smart-phone technology [1,
2]. A brief version of evaluations of communication technology
over the past/present centuries are summarised as follows:
Fourth century – in ancient Greece, the hydraulic semaphore was
built and used for communication. It played a vital role during the
first Punic War.
Fifth century – Persia–Syria established the first pigeon-short-
messaging system after the discovery of the uncanny ability of the
pigeons.
Sixth century – the first postal system established by the Cyrus was
adopted later-on at the other ancients (Egypt, Rome, and China)
with incorporating slightly new mechanism [1–3].
century – flag semaphore, specific codes displayed by positioning
the hand-held flags to communicate between ships was established.
Every moment of the flags indicated an alphabet or numeric value.
1672 – Robert Hooke first demonstrated an acoustic telephone and
proved that acoustic signal travels over the wire to either a
microphone or speaker.
1790 – the Chappe brothers established the first optical telegraph
system in Europe referring to the naval flag semaphore. It was a
pendulum-like system built on a tower. The telegraph system had
mechanical arms that swung around to convey messages between
tall towers [1–4].
1838 – Samuel B. Morse had been working with his friends Alfred
Vail and Leonard Gale on the idea of recording telegraph. They
established a pushbutton-based message transmission system
between two telegraphs connected together with a pair of current
carrying wires. This technique is now called Morse-code and it laid
the base for several wired communication systems [3, 4].
1858 – at this time, telegraph stations for continuous
communications were laid in Britain and the United States.
However, laying a telephone cable to establish telephonic
communication between England and the United States was the
wish of Cyrus Field in New York.
1867 – in this year, Adml. Phillip introduced lamp-based code
(dots/dashes) signalling techniques at the sea for establishing
communication between ships.
1876 – This was a great year to A. Graham Bell. With an
assignment of the teacher (in a deaf school) in the USA, he was
researching to build an electronic system to transmit speech signal
which had given him the birth of the telephone.
1877 – Thomas Alva Edison built an acoustic phonograph to
record/transmit sound signal.
1880 – A. Graham Bell built a laboratory and demonstrated his
invention ‘photophone’, through which he transmitted sound signal
using a beam of light as shown in Fig. 1a. For this invention, i.e.
first wireless call, A. Graham Bell owned a place in history. A
historical plaque, as shown in Fig. 1b, placed on the side of the
Franklin School in Washington, D.C marks one of the points of
which the photophone was demonstrated [4, 5]. This photophone
demonstration was the first take for today's free space optical
(FSO) communication technology shown in Fig. 1c [4–6].

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© The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2019
1893 – Nikolai Tesla transmitted radio waves wirelessly through a
transmitter (Tx). 1896 – Marconi sent his radio waves over a
distance of 2 km.
1915 – A. Graham Bell credited with an entry in the history book
second time due to his long land-line phone at a coast.
1927 – Phillip T. Farnsworth demonstrated the first working
television set. The wireless telephone service was made available
between the UK and USA [5, 6].
1930 – it was decided by ‘American telephone and telegraph’ to
have a test/demonstration videophone.
1934 – first wireless telephone calls were made available between
USA and Japan.
1936 – first videophone connectivity was made in Nazi Germany
for the public use and exhibited it in a trade-fair.
1946 – first automobile voice telephone call was demonstrated.
1956 – Newfoundland and Scotland had got connected via a
transatlantic voice telephone cable with 36 circuits.
1962 – the wireless satellite communication act was officially
passed and it enabled the establishment of wireless services
through space.
1964 – Charles Kao and George Hockham proved the possibility of
voice communication using light signal through fibre optic cable.
They published their experimental results and findings in a paper,
which actually revived the photophone of A. Graham Bell's.
1965 – first picture-phone service began in trials. 1969 – digital
data travelled for the connectivity of ARPANET's nodes and the
Internet's predecessor.
1973 – cellular mobile first voice call was made, for the talk time
of 30 min, by Inventor Martin Cooper at Bell Laboratory and the
mobile phone battery took a year to get fully charged [5–7]. 1979 –
as per the decision and requirement of INMARSAT, marine vessels
were connected for reliable, safety and secured communications.
1981 – Japan got the commercial automated cellular network
deployed.
1982 – highly secure and limited internet cluster access was given
to the military, corporate and research facilities of few universities.
1983 – ARPANET standardised internet connectivity and service
providing protocols through network control protocols and
transmission control protocol/internet protocol (IP).
1998 – iridium put 64 satellites into the decided orbit/place.
2003 – IP-assisted phone calls were made using the existing
computer internet network [4–7].
Through these discoveries and maturities in the telecommunication
field, the technology has evolved over time and multiple
generations/revolutions aiming to establish a fifth generation (5G)
network in the near future. The government affairs and business
faces associated with the telegraphy system are getting rapid
changes very often. The ability of instant communication has a
huge positive potential on several aspects of human daily life and
its modernisation. Integration of all the services into the mobile
phone, called ‘internet telephone’ keeping the optical beam as a
backbone carrier is the emerging research topics as well as near
future requirements. The IP telephony network provides services
based on voice over IP communication protocol and it rapidly
gains a strong base against conventional telephone network
strategies. In IP telephony, the voice signals are sent as packets of
data via the existing broadband internet connection infrastructures;
hence, it replaces the old telephone service system and can provide
services at low cost. Furthermore, the increasing need of high
bandwidth backhaul/mobile-backhaul network requirements gives
more attention for reconfigurable broadband FSO data links to
address the issues associated with today's large number of more
bandwidth cell-sites and a large number of connectivity in a cell-
site requirement, which are very much essential for next generation
5G mobile networks. Satellite, space-borne or unmanned aerial
vehicle (UAV)-assisted FSO links can also be established with a
ground station in case installing a direct line-of-sight (LOS) high-
speed link becomes difficult. Today's research shows the feasibility
of FSO data link up to 400 Gbps [8] for high-altitude platforms
(HAPs), and HAP-satellite backhaul links seem to be possible.
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2 Principle of free-space optical (FSO)
communication
The present telecommunication era has reached its level over the
past few decades with massive expansions and tremendous growth
in long-range optical fibre data links, local/wide/metropolitan area
networks (LANs/WANs/MANs) and Gbps Ethernet
communication ports etc. [9–13]. A low-cost and more dynamic
service has to be provided by the network designers in order to
improve the number of their network users to have full utilisation
of available optical channel capacity. At present, the successful
maximum bandwidth of line – T1 connections, i.e. local loop
network, is 150 kbps [7–14]. Therefore, a high data rate bridge
(coupling) in between the local loop networks, i.e. LANs/WANs/
MANs, becomes significant to address the demand of emerging
broadband access and issues of first/last mile bottlenecks. For these
requirements, initially, FSO communication had been identified as
an assured most reliable broadband technology, a supplement to
networking way-out and hence, it had been deployed in the field
[11–15]. In FSO communication technology, the message signal or
data is transmitted via the modulated visible or infrared (IR) lights,
generated by either light-emitting diodes (LEDs) or lasers, through
the random atmospheric turbulence channel to establish
communication between one point to another unlike the fibre optic
communication that transmits the message/data within a guided
light carrying fibre. During the initial period, the FSO technology
was underestimated by saying that ‘the field did not mature’ even
after several years [9–11, 14–16]. However, the FSO technology
was already proved to be transmitting the voice over the light beam
for the distance of few 600′ in the 19th century by A. Graham Bell,
which was named ‘photophone’, prior to his invention of the
telephone [1–3, 15, 17]. Today's matured FSO technology,
particularly for defence, astronomical, space communication, and
medical imaging has been developed to its current stage for the
past 40 years. Most of the developments in the FSO technology
have happened due to its success and to satisfy the increasing
demand in the aerospace and defence activities as well as today's
FSO communication commercial systems needs [13, 18, 19].
The FSO system transmits visible or invisible light beam, i.e.
terahertz (THz) spectral signal, using the optical antenna, i.e.
telescope as shown in Fig. 2. Multiple digital data corresponding to
a mix of information from internet, sensor, image/video/radio
signals, computer files, telephone signals etc., are first converted to
optical signal using the suitable electrical to optical converters
(LEDs or lasers), then modulated by a suitable technique,
multiplexed in optical domain to a single channel and finally
Fig. 1  Historical developments of optical wireless communications
(a) A. Graham Bell's photo and photophone–demonstration of sound transmission over
a beam of light [4], (b) A historical plaque on the side of the Franklin School in
Washington, D.C [4], (c) Today's FSO Communication Rooftop Tx/Rx system [5]
Fig. 2  Schematic of a simple FSO communication data link: k represents
the number of channels
IET Commun., 2019, Vol. 13 Iss. 16, pp. 2405-2419
© The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2019
transmitted towards the receiver (Rx) section using an optical
antenna. The Rx optical antenna collects the transmitted photons
and focuses the light beam into optical demultiplexer-optical to
electrical converter (photodiode or phototransistor) to convert the
light back to an electrical signal, and are sent to the respective
destinations. At present, 100 Mbps to 3 Gbps commercial FSO
communication systems are available. However, today's research
level systems have the potential of offering a maximum data rate of
400 Gbps [8, 19, 20]. FSO communication can be successfully
installed if we can maintain a clear LOS between transmitting and
receiving antennas (telescopes) with the minimum required power,
i.e. the power equal to or above the Rx sensitivity. Unlike the
radiofrequency (RF) technology, the FSO communication uses
optical beam as a carrier, hence, it does not require spectrum
licensing, frequency coordination, interference to other channels/
system/equipment and is extremely secure/protected. Data rates
can be comparable to the existing fibre optic communication. In
addition, the coherency and low divergence of the laser beam
enable the installation of unlimited parallel FSO links at a given
site. FSO Tx–Rx systems can be installed even inside the building
since it can be accessed through the window glass as well. This
type of installation simplifies the wiring/cabling to operate it in an
office and/or a room. For the maximum utilisation of MAN
services, addressing the issues associated with last-mile and even
last-feet high-speed connectivity becomes one of the primary
requirements which can be resolved by the FSO systems. FSO
systems allow the new clients’ high-speed connectivity
requirement in order to reach the maximum capacity of MANs. To
understand one of the most fundamental theories at the Rx optics it
needs to refer the Claude Shannon's work of the year 1949 on
channel capacity theorem [21]. The theorem states the possibility
of establishing communication at a capacity C b/s with zero error
bit is given by
P beam interaction with the atmosphere along the optical path is not
C = Blog2 1 + SNR = Blog2 1 +
N 0B
(1)
Eb
= Blog2 1 + r b/s
N0
where B is the channel bandwidth, P is the signal average power,
N0 is the noise power spectral density (PSD), signal-to-noise ratio
(SNR) is the power ratio of average signal and noise levels, Eb is
the energy/bit and r is spectral efficiency. To arrive at the best
possible bandwidth with suitable channel/source coding and
modulation technique, the Shannon sensitivity of 0.7 photons/bit,
i.e. SNR of −1.6 dB has to be attained [20, 22]. In addition to the
ground-based FSO links, inter-satellite/up–down links, unmanned-
aerial-vehicle (UAV)/ground platforms /mobile and stationary
terminals [23–25] connectivity's are also possible with the FSO
systems. The unique characteristics of the laser such as coherency,
the possibility of modulation at a high data rate, and low beam
divergence, have made it a preferred carrier to establish the long
range secure FSO communication. Based on the distance covered
and impact of FSO channel, the technology is categorised as (i)
indoor FSO and (ii) outdoor FSO systems [14]. In the indoor, i.e.
short-distance FSO systems, the light carrier beam with wide
divergence rather than narrow one is more appropriate because the
impact of time varying atmospheric channel effects is not a part in
it and its performance fully depends on the Tx power, channel loss
and sensitivity of the optical detector. The outdoor FSO link covers
a long distance in the order of kilometres using the atmospheric
channel as a medium of communication [14, 26]. Most-common
modulation schemes that are being used in FSO communication are
on–off keying, differential phase shift keying, digital pulse width,
digital pulse position, and digital pulse interval modulations [9–11,
15, 27]. The digital pulse position modulation scheme is more
appropriate for communication through multiple scattering
atmospheric turbulent channels [15, 27, 28].
3 FSO communication channels: atmospheric,
space, and underwater
IET Commun., 2019, Vol. 13 Iss. 16, pp. 2405-2419
© The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2019
The FSO is one of the wireless outdoor communication
technologies, which achieved a high data rate of 400 Gbps per data
link [8]. FSO communication provides attractive solutions to
achieve a high-bandwidth data transmission wherever the
permanent/quick installation of fibre optic cable is not feasible/
possible. Tremendous technology advancements in the fields of
optical sources (laser/LED), modulation techniques, the sensitivity
of optical detectors (photodiode/phototransistor), components’
power consumption and devices’ size/weight; facilitated us to
initiate a reliable extremely high bandwidth FSO data transmission
system. However, for both permanent and backup FSO data links,
the atmospheric parameters such as smoke, rain, snow, fog,
aerosol, dust, turbulence (refractive index) fluctuation, sand wind
etc. of the channel badly affect the data rate and performance of
FSO link. Thus, the reliability of overall communication quality
gets degraded. Absorption and scattering of atmospheric particulate
matter extensively diminish the transmitted optical power while
optical turbulence fluctuation severely disturbs the quality of wave
front of the optical carrier beam. These atmospheric effects on the
propagating data carrying optical beam cause the intensity fading,
multiple scattering, and random power drop at the detector surface.
This means that most of the properties (polarisation, refraction,
absorption, coherency, scattering, and attenuation) of the light
beam are affected during its propagation via the atmospheric
channel. The main reason for this is that the FSO channel, which
consists of air molecules, gases, and constituents that vary the
energy in accordance with the variations of the atmospheric
temperature. The quantitative estimation of inhomogeneous and
dynamical change of refractive index (air density/consistency), i.e.
the regular motion of air cells due to thermal turbulence fluctuation
can be determined. More variations of the refractive index results
in random optical beam fluctuations at a frequency range of ∼10 
Hz to about 800 Hz, typically for the PSD of scintillation for
horizontal propagation path with a point Rx [9–11, 27]. The optical
the same throughout due to the random fluctuations and power loss
of the air mass along the FSO path. Optical intensity fluctuates
(measured by scintillation index) at the detector surface due to the
random temporal/spatial intensity fluctuations of the optical beam
throughout its propagation. Thus, the received optical signal
randomly gets focus/defocus at the centre of the optical detector.
The bit error rate (BER) increases significantly especially in the
Gbps transmission rate as well as for long-range FSO data link
even for the smaller amount of scintillation effect. Therefore,
calculating the profile of variations of scintillation index becomes
significant prior to system installation to determine the FSO system
performance [11, 27]. Altogether, the scintillation due to the
atmospheric effects leads to signal to fade and at times a complete
disconnect in the optical link for the FSO communication system
[27, 29, 30]. The link margin (LM) is a general statistical factor to
quantify the performance of the FSO communication system. The
LM is defined as a ratio of received power to the required power
for a given data rate and error probability. Since the atmospheric
conditions play a vital role in determining the FSO system
performance it needs to be accounted for while calculating the LM
for any FSO system design. Existing LM models that include
atmospheric channel and transmit–receive station parameters can
be found in [9, 10, 15, 27, 31, 32]. These models support the
designers to have an optimum transmit–receive station parameter
to initiate a data link with the maximum possible data rate for all
weather conditions at a given location. The FSO communication
channel is normally classified, based on the nature of the optical
path, as follows: (i) terrestrial channel (buildings, mountains, and
towers), (ii) ground to space channel (near-earth satellites, UAVs,
and space-shuttles), (iii) airborne channel (space airborne and
satellites), (iv) indoor (path length <∼100 m) channel (IR and
visible light), and (v) optical interconnect (path length <∼1 cm)
channel (optocouplers and optical integrated chips). In the same
way, the FSO systems (deployed as a high-speed data link, base
transceiver station, backhaul and/or cell sites) are classified based
on the scenario of installation of Tx and Rx as follows:
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(i) Horizontal link – between rooftops of tall buildings, window,
and rooftop, windows or tall-poles/towers. This type of FSO data
link is deployed in metro areas to establish building connectivity
with the maximum link range of a few kilometres. Since this link
covers a relatively short range, the impact of the atmospheric
channel is assumed uniform throughout the link while calculating
the scintillation and turbulence strength index. In this link, Tx and
Rx stations are typically deployed at the buildings, hence, the
optical beam pointing accuracy is affected by the building sway
due to the high wind, differential channel heating/cooling and
ground motions resulting large pointing errors, i.e. beam centroid
wandering on the detector plane.
(ii) Slant link – between ground and UAV, ground and airborne
platform or ground and top of mountain/tower. This type of link is
preferred wherever setting up a horizontal path is difficult.
Therefore, the atmospheric turbulence strength variation and its
impact on the propagating optical beam is not uniform throughout
the path.
(iii) Uplink – between ground and satellite or ground and
spacecraft. Typically, this type of link is preferred for the ground to
space propagation. Computation of atmospheric turbulence
strength profile as a function of altitude is necessary in order to
compute the signal intensity fluctuation at the Rx surface.
(iv) Downlink – between spacecraft and ground or satellite and
ground. This type of link is preferred for a downlink FSO
application. The computation of the altitude turbulence strength
profile is mandatory to have the knowledge on the received signal
intensity fluctuations at the ground station.
(v) Indoor link – between the indoor base station and laptop,
computer, phone, printer, and other networks. An indoor FSO
system requires low power coloured/IR LED or visible light
sources. This type of short range indoor FSO link receives
increasing attention due to its handy terminals and multimedia
communication at home, working office, and industries. This type
of link is also deployed to have a high-speed power efficient
narrow field-of-view (FOV) diffuse link at the indoor environment
with a simple direction diversity Rx [9, 10, 14].
(vi) Underwater link – underwater FSO link becomes an attractive
alternative solution to the existing acoustic communication system
due to its high data rate (few hundred Mbps as of today), very low
latency and directionality (reduced multipath effects). However, it
is a challenging field of investigation such as the turbulence effects
on the atmospheric channels in an outdoor FSO system [33–35].
This type of link has spectacularly increased applications in the last
few years for underwater surveillance, observation, recording of
sea bed characteristics, environmental monitoring, ships secured
communication, submarines communication, unmanned
underwater vehicles communications, torpedo guidance,
underwater sensor node data routing/interface etc. (see also Section
8.4).
Ground atmospheric turbulence strength (Cn2 ) measured for first
100 m varies from 10−11 through 10−15 m−2/3 [9, 10, 27] and
accurate estimate of Cn2 becomes significant to install a successful
FSO system at a given location. The variation of Cn2 is a function of
altitude, local weather condition, and geographical location. The
input to the quantitative analysis of the FSO system is the
probability density function (PDF) of the received optical power
fluctuations based on which the probability of detection is
computed. Designing a more general model suitable for all weather
conditions and geometrical locations to predict Cn2 and received
power distribution, i.e. PDF is difficult. The Cn2 and received power
PDF prediction models designed based on the open-atmosphere
and indoor man-made atmospheric chamber can be found in the
literature [9, 10, 15, 27]. Some of the main factors, corresponding
to the optical channel that needs to be considered to install the FSO
system are beam divergence loss, background noise, sky radiance,
miss-alignment or pointing loss, cloud blockage, atmospheric
seeing, and angle of arrival (AOA) fluctuations. In the satellite
FSO links, pointing, acquisition, and tracking (PAT) of both Tx and
Rx beams is very much essential, but performing this operation is
2408
Fig. 3  Atmospheric factors challenging the installation of FSO
communication system
difficult due to the narrow divergence of optical beam and platform
motion [23–25]. Even under adverse atmospheric conditions, the
advanced satellite FSO system has to provide robust and high
bandwidth service to both satellite and ground links. In both
terrestrial and satellite FSO links, their performance is ultimately
decided by the local atmospheric conditions. Recent research
shows that the FSO system capacity and its spectral efficiency with
reduced cross-talk can be significantly improved just by
multiplexing multiple independent orbital angular momentum
(OAM) beams. The researchers demonstrated that a 100.8 Tbps
FSO system is possible by incorporating the OAM with
wavelength division multiplexing (WDM). For atmospheric FSO
links, OAM can be a very important technique to provide
extremely high data rate FSO communications [29, 30].
4 Temporal challenges in the FSO communication
systems
All the uniqueness and benefits of the FSO communication system
can be met at some cost since the optical wave is transmitted
through the uncontrolled random atmospheric medium. In a fibre
optic communication, the power available at another end is quite
predictable, whereas, in air, it involves complex, inhomogeneous
and inaccurately quantifiable issues due to the open atmospheric
turbulence fluctuations and spatially distributed FSO channel
characteristics. The fundamental limitations of the FSO system
depend on the atmospheric conditions since the data carrying
optical beam propagates through it. Optical propagation is severely
affected by the atmospheric parameters such as fog, rain, snow,
smog, smoke, wind-storm, sand-wind, turbulence strength
fluctuation and building sway [16–18, 27, 28] as depicted in Fig. 3.
Water droplets and aerosol particles formed by vapours of size of a
few hundred microns and they can alter the characteristics of
propagating optical wave, completely hamper it, degrade the wave
front quality, which may result in the signal loss and/or fluctuations
of the signal intensity/phase caused by their combined interactions
of absorption, scattering, and reflection [9, 10, 26–28], thereby
limiting the link availability with increased system BER [19, 26,
27, 36]. Fog substantially attenuates visible and near-IR radiations.
The atmospheric attenuation of the FSO system is analogous to the
rainfall attenuation of RF systems [15, 27]. These major
atmospheric channel particles grow or degrade in accordance to the
percentage of humidity and the effects can be determined either by
Mie or Rayleigh scattering theory as a function of optical
wavelength and particle size [15, 27, 28]. Optical attenuation due
to atmospheric molecular absorption and extinction varies as a
function of optical wavelength and in the higher wavelength
region, i.e. above one micrometre, the atmospheric molecules
weakly interact with the optical field [11, 28, 37], which results in
negligible optical scattering. Therefore, the selection of the optical
wavelength in accordance with the local atmospheric conditions
becomes a primary requirement for the successful installation of an
FSO system. The main factor for the scintillation of the optical
field at the Rx optics is the fluctuation of atmospheric turbulence
strength along the optical path due to the solar inhomogeneous
heating of channel air pockets. The scintillation ultimately creates
intensity/phase fluctuations over time at the Rx optics [9–12, 36,
38], which has to be treated as a random variable [9, 10, 27, 38]. In
the short-range (<1 km) optical propagation, the effects due to
scintillation are smaller than the effects in long-range (>1 km).
Scintillation becomes one of the main factors that degrade the
overall performance and reliability of the FSO system specifically
for long distance.
IET Commun., 2019, Vol. 13 Iss. 16, pp. 2405-2419
© The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2019

Fig. 4  Illustration of aperture averaged reception of an optical beam
The time-varying turbulence strength fluctuation of the FSO
channel fully depends on the atmospheric factors such as
temperature, humidity, pressure, altitude, geographical geometry of
given installation site, wind speed etc. [9, 10, 27, 38]. Full or
partial blockage of optical field can happen by the temporary
physical obstructions of birds, insects, drones, mini-UAVs, tree-
limbs, building sway, factory smokes etc. in the LOS of the FSO
system. These types of interruptions can effectively be mitigated by
employing multiple input and multiple output (MIMO) FSO
transmission/reception system [27, 39]. Today's FSO system
consists of redundant MIMO transmit–receive optics to eliminate
the interference of objects such as birds, insects etc. In this case, an
object blocking a major portion of the optical field of one Tx
and/or one Rx will not cause any impact on the overall FSO link.
Furthermore, the sway of the FSO installed platform/tower/
building can create a severe beam wandering on the detector plane
[9, 10, 40]. The main causes for this type of sway are high wind,
random heating/cooling and/or ground motion over time. Today's
commercial FSO systems have an in-built mechanism, such as
beam tracking–aligning system, beam divergence combination,
well matched FOV, and clock recovery phase-lock-loop that handle
the movement of deployed buildings and maintain the beam
centroid stability on the detector plane. Solar interference to 1550  reduce the power variations in the adverse weather conditions. An
nm optical wave can be combated using suitable optical filters.
Dynamic adjustment of laser power with a suitable adaptive control
scheme in accordance with the atmospheric (channel) condition
will give a better and reliable FSO data link. The requirement of
transmit power is low in clear weather whereas, in dense weather,
it is relatively high to maintain the required data rate and BER. The
results and in-depth discussions associated with several theoretical,
statistical, and experimental studies carried out on the atmospheric
turbulence strength fluctuation can be found in [9, 10, 27, 41–43].
5 Spatial distortions and mitigation techniques
The spatial distortion of the received beam has to be first
compensated to design and deploy a reliable FSO communication
link. Once the beam stability and phase noise correction are
achieved, then only any suitable classical error control and data
decoding techniques can be applied to improve the overall system
performance. Mandatory techniques that need to follow to mitigate
the spatial disturbances are (i) aperture averaging, (ii) PAT, and (iii)
wave-front correction, which are briefly discussed below.
5.1 Aperture averaging
Low-power margin is sufficient even in the long-range optical
propagation in the case of clear atmospheric conditions to achieve
the required data rate. However, the installed FSO system should
be able to operate even in the adverse weather conditions, i.e. in the
presence of received signal fluctuation, beam divergence, and
fading created by random atmospheric turbulence variations
throughout the optical path. Within the earth's atmosphere, strong
Cn2 is observed due to the differential temperature differences and it
decreases (since the air temperature decreases) as the altitude
increases [25, 27, 44]. Strong Cn2 is measured from the optical beam
propagation near roof-tops or similar structures due to the
increased temperature fluctuations. Aperture averaging is a more
common technique to reduce the power fluctuations using the
appropriate size of averaged Rx-aperture.
Smaller aperture has a smaller collection area; thus, the
received signal power variance is determined by the link range and
the value of atmospheric turbulence strength. Factor F is defined as
a ratio of normalised intensity variance (σI2) to that of a point Rx as
[27, 45]
IET Commun., 2019, Vol. 13 Iss. 16, pp. 2405-2419
© The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2019
σI2 D
F= 2 (2)
σI D = 0
where F is the aperture averaging factor and D is the Rx aperture.
As given in [46], the factor F can also be calculated as
∫
∞
16 bI ρ
F= K ρ ρdρ (3)
πD2 0
bI 0
where bI(ρ) is the covariance function of the irradiance, bI(0) is the
variance of the irradiance, which is equivalent to the Rytov
variance for weak turbulence and
ρ ρ ρ2
K ρ = arccos − 1− (4)
D D D2
Typically, D≪0.5(λL), where L is the link range and is taken as a
point Rx. For a plane wave with small inner scale, l0 ≪ 0.5(L/k),
the F can be approximated by
7/6 −1
kD2
F = 1 + 1.07 (5)
4L
where k is the wave number (k = 2π/λ). As in (5), for smaller
aperture, i.e. ((kD2/4L) ≪ 1), the F is 1 and for larger aperture,
(kD2/4L ≫ 1), the power variance decreases with increasing
aperture size. Therefore, aperture averaging becomes significant to
illustration representing the aperture averaged optical signal
reception is shown in Fig. 4. The aperture averaged optical
antenna, e.g. Cassegrain telescope, collects the majority of the
photons travelled through the random atmosphere [9, 10, 27, 46]. A
larger-aperture antenna collects all the photons entering into it,
thus, there would be relatively no turbulence-induced scintillation,
i.e. it reduces the received power variations. In practical FSO
system installation, there is a trade-off, in terms of optical Tx/Rx
antenna size, weight, and potential agility, in choosing the aperture
of the Rx.
5.2 Pointing, acquisition and tracking (PAT)
In the long-range missions such as realistic interstellar explorer
[25, 47, 48], the FSO optical systems are preferred to have even
low-data-rate downlink communication [25, 48]. In this type of
long-range terrestrial/up–down link/inter-satellite/space FSO
communication, having an on-board equipped with more accurate
optical beam centroid PAT system is essential to improve the beam
centroid stability on the detector plane. A field experiment,
provided by Vilcheck et al. [43], indicated the average angular
fluctuation ranging from 13 to 25 µrad in the weak turbulence
regime. For some typical pointing and tracking FSO systems, the
pointing accuracy required will, therefore, be a few microrads or
less [44]. The angular pointing resolution of gimbals currently
available in the market is in the range of µrad, whereas that of
mirror-based aligning, tracking and positioning (ATP) mechanisms
are in the range of sub-µrad [45]. Some of their results can be used
in designing an acquisition system for inter-satellite optical
communications. Optical wireless satellite networks will require 1–
10 μrad pointing accuracy for supporting a data rate of 10 Gbps
[46]. Since the PAT system has to be installed on-board, it has to be
feasible in terms of compact, weight, power requirement etc. The
PAT system can be configured using the commercially available
micro-scale tip/tilt platforms, such as piezoelectric actuator-based
fast steering mirror (FSM), designed for very fine beam pointing
and stabilisation at the accuracy of ≃1 μrad or even a fraction of
μrad, in two axes [47–49]. A stranded beam centroid position error
measurement and correction plant showing main optoelectronic
devices are shown in Fig. 5. The principal tracking sensor is a 4-
Quadrant (4Q) photodiode called opto-electronic position detector
(OPD). The beam centroid error values measured using the 4Q-
OPD are converted to digital data using a bidirectional analogue-
2409

Fig. 5  Top-level schematic of an FSO–PAT beam steering closed-loop
control system: PRM represents the pure reflection mirror
Fig. 6  Conceptual scheme of FSO communication with sensor-less AO
system. Insert figures: received beam SR without AO (a) and with AO (b)
to-digital (A/D) converters. The mono-pulse arithmetic circuit
computes the position error signals: x-axis tilt (Ex), y-axis tip (Ey)
and sum (Σ) as
A+D − B+C
Ex = Etilt = (6)
∑
A+B − C+D
Ey = Etip = (7)
∑
where ∑ is the sum of the signals received from all the quadrants,
i.e. (A + B + C + D), which is used to normalise Ex and Ey as in (6)
and (7). The error values and total energy can be used to compute
the lateral laser spot position and AoA of the received beam [9, 10,
27, 49]. The details of the beam centroid position, i.e. Ex, Ey and Σ
are the input to the digital signal processing (DSP) controller that
generates the control data to steer and stabilise the arrived beam at
the centre of the communication detector. Control data are passed
to the FSM through digital-to-analogue (D/A) converter and high-
power amplifier.
The steering mirror is mounted on a tri-piezoelectric-actuated-
platform so as to achieve the precise μrad beam steering accuracy
as required. In effect, beam centroid displacement is measured
using the 4Q-OPD and mitigated using the closed-loop controller,
and thus the beam stability at the centre of the communication
detector is improved [49, 50].
5.3 Waveform correction
Atmospheric turbulence fluctuation will also contribute to phase
disturbances along the propagation path. Adaptive optics (AO)-
based phase compensation technique gives a successful solution to
improve the reliability of the FSO communication system. AO
systems are more commonly used in astronomical imaging
applications to compensate for the wave-front aberrations created
by turbulence fluctuations in the ground atmosphere [51, 52].
Incorporation of AO into FSO communication systems has been
researched over the past few decades [52–54]. For example, Li et
al. evaluated the channel capacity of OAM-based FSO link under
different ranges of atmospheric turbulence with real-time wave-
front distortions correction AO system [54]. Liu et al. derived the
relationship of fluctuation of AOA and wave-front distortions. An
2410
FSM and a deformable mirror (DM) are used to compensate for the
wave-front distortion in their work [55]. The wave-front distortions
are directly measured using a wave-front sensor (WFS), e.g. Shack
Hartmann – WFS or charge coupled device (CCD) camera.
However, in all of these measurements, the DM or
microelectromechanical system mirrors are used to correct the
wavefront aberrations. There are application limitations in WFS-
based wavefront aberration measurement technique particularly in
the multiphoton microscope for biological imaging and FSO
communications along with distributed turbulence optical path [55,
56]. To solve this limitation, WFS-less AO systems are introduced
and found more suitable for all applications [55–57]. Today's AO
system attracts much attention to model-based and model-free
correction techniques. A typical conceptual configuration of the
FSO–AO system is shown in Fig. 6. A laser source transmits a
Gaussian beam from a distant point. The wavefront of the
transmitted beam gets aberrated as it travels through the
atmospheric turbulent channel. The optical lens collects the arrived
beam, collimates it and makes it fall on the DM. The DM reflected
beam gets split into two beams: propagating beam falls on the
optical detector while the reflected beam falls on the CCD camera.
The DSP controller generates the suitable control signals Ψ(r,θ),
based on the CCD output to drive the DM such as to correct the
measured aberration Φ(r,θ). This closed-loop control processes
continuously as long as the aberration exists.
Wavefront disturbances compensated optical beam, i.e. φ(r,θ)
keeps more coupling efficiency with a spatial flatness at the Rx and
hence, the communication quality is significantly improved. The
Strehl ratio (SR) is a metric to quantify the performance of the AO
system. Higher SR means better performance in the system. An
incident beam profile captured without (a) and with (b) AO system
is shown in the inserts of Fig. 6. More details on various control
techniques of wavefront aberration measurement, control
algorithms, and wavefront corrections are available in [27, 52–57].
High speed wavefront distortion measurement and higher real-time
performance in correcting is very important especially for FSO
communication since the data rate is high. As found in the
literature, today's FSO–AO systems are suffering from the
inadequate speed of wavefront corrections and hence this
requirement creates a pathway for high-speed microrad accuracy
actuators.
6 Quantitative analysis of the reliability of FSO
communication systems
FSO technology is becoming more popular and getting rapid
adaptation with classical network infrastructures to attain a high-
speed terrestrial/global data transmission. A thorough study of
atmospheric variations at the place of installation is mandatory in
order to get better availability, before establishing an FSO link [9,
10, 27, 58]. Variations of the open weather conditions are
functional variations of atmospheric parameters of a particular
season and location, e.g. under low atmospheric visibility
condition, the scattering and attenuation (absorption) are more.
Thus, the average visibility has to be computed from the mean and
variance of the visibility data collected over a year-long period at a
given location in different local sessions. After all these analyses,
FSO communication data link design can be carried out so as to
have a better link and desirable availability with the required BER
[59, 60]. Narrow and highly collimated (low divergence) optical
beam is preferred for FSO data link. To model the behaviour of the
atmosphere and mitigate its effects on optical beam, information
about its long-term steady parameters and statistics of atmospheric
variations at a given geometrical location are mandatory. The link
budget can be expressed in terms of transmit power (Pt), receive
power (Pr), Rx sensitivity (Nb) and propagation loss (Lp) as [60,
61]
LM = Pt − Lp − Nb (8)
Equation (8) gives basic LM to express the reliability of optical
data link. The LM can also be defined by [61–63]
IET Commun., 2019, Vol. 13 Iss. 16, pp. 2405-2419
© The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2019
 Available Rx power
LM =
Rx power required to achieve a (9)
specified BER at a given rate
LM determines how much margin is required in an FSO system to
compensate for the scattering/absorption (due to fog, snow, and
rain) and scintillation (turbulence) effects at a given range. The
visibility, attenuation at 785 nm, effective link range for an FSO
system under various weather conditions are discussed in [63–66].
For telecommunication applications, FSO systems will need to
meet very high availability requirements. For example, carrier-
class availability is considered to be 99.999% (five-nines) for very
high data rate communications [9, 10, 15, 66, 67]. This reliability is
equivalent to the link availability as the percentage of time over a
year that an FSO link will be operational with just 5 min down per
year [11]. A simple calculation shows that using a laser of transmit
power of 30 mW, detector sensitivity of 25 nW, mispointing loss of
3 dB, optical loss of 4 dB, the LM is estimated as 54 dB. It shows
that for this link budget the link range even in the heaviest fog of
350 dB/km attenuation is still possible up to 140 m range [11, 60,
65–68]. For a given specific BER, the acceptable power variation
range can be defined with a dynamic interval to guarantee the
corresponding link function. The Rx power gets saturated or
minimum SNR is not met when the condition (Pr > Ps) or (Pr < Nb),
respectively, occurs where Ps is a specified saturation value. When
the data rate is higher than the required value, the link performance
is quantitatively measured in terms of availability, as a time
average Tav in %. The data link availability would go bad based on
the probability of additional losses (P(αA)) induced by the
atmosphere on the propagating beam that makes the received
power below the required LM. The link availability in terms of
time average is given by
αAlim
T av = 100% ∫0
p αA dαA (10)
where αA lim is the atmospheric attenuation coefficient as an
integral limit. The PDF of αA can be obtained using long-time
observed data set corresponding to the received signal.
Meteorological weather forecasting stations and airport authorities
use the visibility (V) measurement data to estimate the channel
attenuation coefficient as [15, 28]
−q
dB 3.91 λ
αA = 4.43 (11)
km V 550
In the above equation, the value 4.43 is of the relation α (dB/km) =  This characteristic of MZM attracts it as a versatile external
(10 log10 e)α (km−1) = 4.43α (km−1). The value of q has to be
chosen appropriately based on the value of visibility as 1.6 if V >  the fact that the two electrical inputs can be controlled
50, 1.3 if 6 < V < 50, 0.16 V + 0.34 if 1 < V < 6, V – 0.5 if 0.5 < V <  independently to generate a number of different optical modulation
1 and 0 if V < 0.5. The link availability is calculated as given in
(10) and (11) for a given time average, specifying αA and its PDF.
To have an FSO network-assisted access technology and evaluate
its performance at a given spot and link range, it is very useful to
estimate these availabilities of the link. Enterprise-class
availabilities can also extend the possible FSO link ranges to much
longer distances depending on the geographical locations. In
practical network design, the concept of link availability in the
presence of atmospheric turbulence is an important consideration.
In many FSO systems, automatic tracking systems are used so that
pointing errors are not taken into account in defining link reliability
[69]. As an example, for simplicity, if atmospheric turbulence is
characterised by the log-normal model so that the PDF of the
irradiance I can be characterised by
2
1 ln I − ln I0
pI = exp (12)
2 2πIσX 8σX2
where I0 is the average intensity with no turbulence and σx is the
variance parameter. The data link reliability can be given in terms
IET Commun., 2019, Vol. 13 Iss. 16, pp. 2405-2419
© The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2019
of cumulative probability irradiance P(I) and a threshold intensity
(Ith) as
∫ ln Ith /I0
∝
τl = p I dI = 0.5 − 0.5erf (13)
lth 2σX 2
where erf(.) is the error function. The FSO link can be established
when its reliability is larger than a given reliability threshold lth.
The value of the reliability lies between 0 and 1 and depends on the
transmission range, and the longer the link is, the smaller is the
reliability. The mathematics associated with the reliability, BER,
SNR, outage probabilities, LM, and average outage capacity can be
found in [9–11, 60–68].
7 Radio-over-FSO (RoFSO) and FSO/RF systems
The modulation of the optical wave can be performed by altering
its intensity or phase value in accordance with the message signal
or data. Today's FSO communication systems are capable of
transferring data at the rate of classical optical fiber link with
additional advantages and flexibilities. A technique of
simultaneous transmission of a wide spectrum of RF signals in
both directions over an FSO link is known as RoFSO. RoFSO
technique works based on the principle of WDM. A simplified
block diagram of a RoFSO system is shown in Fig. 7. The RoFSO
technology can also be deployed for the connection of central-
point/base-station to multiple numbers of remote points by
distributing microwave signals by means of optical signals [69].
Two physicists, Ludwig Mach and Ludwig Zehnder devised an
apparatus called Mach–Zehnder modulator (MZM) which is used
to perform the modulation of an optical beam as a function of a RF
signal by combining phase-delayed optical beams of an optical
source. The Pockels effect, i.e. a linear electro-optic effect,
produces birefringence in an optical medium when the electric field
is applied as shown in Fig. 7. The principle of this electro-optic
effect is incorporated in the MZM device where a beam-splitter
divides the incident laser light into two paths. In the MZM device,
the phase delay in the upper and lower paths can be controlled
individually by the electric field, i.e. RF signal inputs and then the
beams are recombined. Tuning of the electric field, i.e. RF signal
will decide the phase value of optical signals travelling along two
paths and they combine either constructively or destructively at the
output. This principle, thereby, controls the amplitude and phase of
the unmodulated incident optical carrier. The Pockels effect
changes the refractive index of the optical medium, thus, the MZM
can also be used for amplitude, phase and frequency modulations
[69, 70].
modulator for RoFSO systems. It has two types: single arm drive
and dual arm drive as shown in Fig. 8. Its versatility comes from
formats. The phase shift is introduced in the arms using the
changes of the property of the refractive index inside the arms of
MZM in accordance with the applied RF signal. The combined, i.e.
Fig. 7  Simplified illustration of RoFSO system
Fig. 8  RF tuned optical signal modulation techniques
(a) Single arm drive and (b) Dual arm drive MZM
2411

Fig. 9  Schematic of a full-duplex RoFSO network
the modulated form of these two-phase shifted optical beams at the
output is given by [69]
Eout t = 0.5Ein t e jπ(E1(t)/ V π) + e jπ(E2(t)/ V π)
where the first term represents the upper phase modulator with an
applied electrical voltage E1(t), the second term represents the
lower phase modulator with an applied voltage of E2(t) and Vπ is
the switching voltage. The switching voltage introduces a π radian
phase shift when applied to the control arms of MZM. The 0.5
constant arises from the fact the input optical power is equally
spitted into two arms. Double-sided/multiple-sided modulation
signals can also be generated using a single/double drive MZM. A
dual-drive MZM is a highly efficient device to generate multiple
forms of simultaneous modulations as
Eout t = 0.5Ein t e j π(E1(t)/ Vπ) + (π /4) + e j π(E2(t)/ V π) + (π /4)
πE t π (15)
= Ein t cos + AC 1
Vπ 4 0
Equation (15) can be expanded using the Bessel function
considering a portion of the signal at fc of E(t) as
Ein t mπ
Eout f c = 2J1 cos 2π f ct
2 Vπ
This is the amplitude modulation for small values of m and also for
the first-order linear Bessel function [64, 65]. The MZM can be
used as a phase modulator by applying the same voltage to each of
the arms. In this case, the modulator's transfer function reduces to
only the phase change of the output that is proportional to the
applied electric voltage as
Eout t = Ein t e jπ(E(t)/ Vπ)
Phase modulation is achieved when a coherent optical detector is
used, otherwise, it is only the amplitude modulation. As given in
(14)–(17), simultaneous transmission of RF signals corresponding
to various wireless services, over the optical wave using WDM
technique becomes possible. This type of RF transmission over
FSO link addresses the high bandwidth demand of futuristic
wireless and advanced microwave/photonics applications such as
microwave photonics measurement, photonics radar etc.
Today's typical wireless services with a possible RoFSO system
are code division multiple access (CDMA), wireless local area
network (WLAN), and integrated service digital broadcasting. A
top-level full-duplex RoFSO network is shown in Fig. 9. The Tx
section generates the RF signals containing the network service
information. These RF signals are applied to the optical unit,
containing optoelectronic components such as MZM, WDM,
optical amplifier, optical coupler etc. The RF modulated optical
beam is taken to the transmitting optical antenna via a
transportation single mode fibre (SMF) cable and then transmitted
towards the Rx antenna, which couples the received light into a
SMF cable at the Rx. The remaining sections of the Rx station
receive the optical signal and perform the reverse conversions to
2412
decode the information. This RoFSO architecture configuration
facilitates the high bandwidth, protocol transparent, and highly
secured RF signal transmission by means of the FSO link. In the
RoFSO system, calculation of power margin is necessary to
estimate the losses associated with fading, SMF coupling, free-
space beam geometry, and atmospheric attenuation. The fading loss
can be calculated by [69–71]
ascin = 4.343 erf −1 2pthr − 1 ⋅ 2ln σp2 + 1
1 (18)
− ln σp2 + 1
2
where pthr is the probability of outage time, erf−1 is the inverse
error function and σp2 is the power scintillation index calculated by
0.49σR2
σp2 DRX, L = exp 7/6
(14) 1 + 0.65d 2 + 1.11σR12/5
−5/6
(19)
0.5σR2 1 + 0.69σR12/5
+ 7/6
1 + 0.9d 2 + 0.62d 2σR12/5
where σ 2
R = 1.23 k7/6L11/6Cn2 is the Rytov variance parameter,
2 1/2
d = kDRX /4L , DRX is Rx aperture diameter and L is link-
range. The atmospheric turbulence degrades optical propagation
significantly and thus the spatial coherence of optical wave goes
down resulting in the reduction of the fibre-coupling efficiency.
The SMF coupling efficiency of an atmospheric turbulence-
distorted optical beam in a RoFSO system without any PAT scheme
can be estimated by
∫∫ AR 2
1 1
η = 8a2 exp − a2 + x + x22
0
(20)
AR
I0 2 x x x x dx dx
AC 1 2 1 2 1 2
where a is coupling geometry, AR/AC is a number of speckles (AR 
= πD2/4 and AC = πρc2), ρc = 1.46Cn2 k2L
−3/5
and I0 is the modified
(16)
Bessel function of the first kind and zero order [69–71]. The
attainable accuracy and improvement using an efficient PAT
system depend on the tracking technology. The main factors
causing the geometrical loss are link-range, beam divergence and
apertures size of Tx/Rx antenna and can be expressed as
DRX
Lgeo = 10log10 (21)
DTX + Lθ
(17) In today's FSO long-range network, the RF communication system
is also used as a backup network. Even though the FSO system has
several advantages including the capability of handling heavy data
traffic density, its availability ultimately depends on FSO channel
conditions particularly fog in adverse weather resulting in
attenuation (typically 50 dB/km at 375 m visibility [72–74] as well
as rapid power fluctuation (signal fading) in clear channel
condition due to the inhomogeneous temperature and wind
changes. To ensure the link availability in all weather conditions
and times, it is proposed to adapt RF systems with the FSO systems
to operate it at a relatively low data rate whenever needed, i.e. if
the FSO link is no longer reliable. The RF system can be enabled,
with the possible data rate, whenever the atmospheric condition is
adverse [75–77]. In this context, the existing FSO and RF networks
have separate transceiver antennas for collecting the optical and RF
signals in outdoor terrestrial links. This approach was tested in
various applications such as system classifications, channel
characterisation, and switching/coding techniques [76, 77].
However, all the systems proposed in these applications are too
complex and bulk in size and thus they are not suitable for
terrestrial, UAV, ground-satellite, and drones data links.
Another emerging technology related to the free-space optics is
a dual band single FSO/RF hybrid data transportation system. The
IET Commun., 2019, Vol. 13 Iss. 16, pp. 2405-2419
© The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2019

Fig. 10  Schematic diagram of dual band single hybrid FSO/RF antenna
Fig. 11  Illustration of free space WDM access system
Fig. 12  Schematic of Free Space SCM System
fundamental concept of this technology arises from accessing the
FSO as well as RF signals using a single hybrid-structure FSO/RF
antenna [77, 78]. Abadi et al. designed an antenna for this purpose
and investigated with a high-speed access network application [78].
The performance of the designed hybrid-antenna is evaluated in
terms of the radiation pattern, received power, return loss, link
budget, and RF SNR. This technique-assisted communication has
been considered as the best solution for the last-mile access
network applications. A schematic diagram of the hybrid FSO/RF
antenna is shown in Fig. 10. The dual antenna has been developed
based on the principle of the Cassegrain structure due to its
interesting features including high efficiency and easy rear access
feed [74, 79]. The RF Tx and Rx are achieved with the classical
parabolic and hyperbolic reflector antennas. The FSO Tx and Rx
optical antennas (lenses) are positioned at the available shadow
region of the hyperbolic reflector as shown in Fig. 10 so as to avoid
the blockage of the RF signal by FSO lenses. Electronic circuits
associated with the FSO sections are placed away from the RF
reflectors to avoid the electromagnetic interference and the optical
Tx/Rx signals are transported to the external electronic sections via
optical fibres. Normally the huge data rate FSO system is in
operation, and the RF with low data rate is enabled whenever the
weather condition is not favourable. More details of designs and
characterisation of this antenna can be found in [78].
8 Optical free space WDM, SCM, worldwide
interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX),
visible/vehicular light data transportation system
The FSO communication technology now attempts to transmit
several messages generated by heterogeneous service sources by
means of optical multiplexing techniques. The more popular and
suitable multiplexing techniques for the FSO communication are
(i) WDM, (ii) sub-carrier multiplexing (SCM), and (iii) WiMAX.
In addition to these attempts, FSO is also getting deployed in the
applications of indoor visible light communication (VLC) and
vehicular VLC (VVLC). Top-level designs of these advanced data
transportation techniques are briefly discussed below.
8.1 Wavelength division multiplexing (WDM)
Optical free-space WDM is an attractive transport system to
provide data and voice communication services. A simple
IET Commun., 2019, Vol. 13 Iss. 16, pp. 2405-2419
© The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2019
schematic of such a transport system with the data source, n-
quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM)-orthogonal frequency-
division multiplexer (OFDM), optical source, optical WDM, Tx–
Rx optics, optical wavelength division demultiplexer (WDDM),
and spatial light modulator (SLM) [73] is shown in Fig. 11. The
QAM-OFDM signals are obtained from the heterogeneous wired/
wireless service sources. The lasers are directly modulated by the
same QAM-OFDM signals. After being emitted from the lasers,
the WDM is performed. The multiplexed light is diverged by the
transmitting telescope and then transmitted over the free-space. At
the Rx side, these optical signals are collected by the aperture
averaged telescope and then fed into the optical WDDM. The
demultiplexed optical signals are sent to the respective SLM. The
SLM is designed such as to make the incident light to focus on the
high bandwidth photodiode. In transmitting telescope, the convex
lens is used to collimate and transfer the diverged parallel beam
into the SLM that focuses it into a point on the photodiode. The
SLM is based on liquid crystal silicon technology in which liquid
crystal is controlled by a DC voltage [80]. The control voltage is
chosen such as to obtain a minimum cross talk between the
neighbouring channels to achieve possible high effective spatial
resolution. The Fresnel lens principle is applied in the SLM to
operate it as a dynamic convex lens. With the help of a low-noise
amplifier (LNA) and data comparator at the Rx chain, the
performance of data decoding is improved. This means that the
modulated light is transmitted over a free-space channel which then
reaches the high bandwidth photodiodes which have the suitable
detection wavelength range with sufficient active area and
responsivity.
Finally, the received signal is passed through a data comparator
for error correction and data decoding. The quality of the QAM-
OFDM output signal of all the FSO channels can be captured by a
communication signal analyser, i.e. OFDM analyser to carry out
the online/offline analysis [73, 80].
8.2 Sub-carrier multiplexing (SCM)
An important aspect of any wireless communication system is a
modulation technique. In the FSO system, a more common
modulation technique is intensity modulation with direct detection.
In large bandwidth FSO data link, some other techniques utilising
the full wavelength resources are needed to be employed [80, 81].
A new modulation scheme employing the single/multiple
wavelength SCM technique offers a high potential and high
capacity system that considerably reduces the cost/bit. Therefore, it
is possible to achieve an aggregate data rate of 1 Tbps against the
bandwidth-length product of 3 Tbps km. Since the practical
realisation of SCM is comparatively simple, it becomes more
popular for establishing reliable integration with existing classical
network infrastructures [80, 81]. Therefore, having SCM integrated
modulation in the FSO communication system becomes significant
to provide high capacity and relatively low-cost solution to the last
mile applications. The advantage of the integration of SCM with
FSO communications is the large temporal and spatial bandwidth
of the optical signal [82]. The setup of an FSO SCM-amplitude
shift keying system is shown in Fig. 12, where n subcarriers have
been multiplexed and then transmitted. The MZM is used fo6r
modulating the optical signal using the multiplexed RF data signal.
The modulated optical carrier signal is transmitted into free-space
after beam expansion and collimation. The transmitted signal is
collected by the receiving telescope and focused on the photodiode.
The output of the photodiode is demultiplexed and routed into
the respective demodulation and local channel. Thus, the multiple
RF channels are transmitted over the FSO-SCM channel to their
destinations. Coherent electrical detection is possible by
implementing the digital SCM technique. Owing to this coherency,
efficient exploration of the available full spectral bandwidth of the
FSO system is utilised. Irrespective of SCM implementation either
in analogue or digital with a respective modulation scheme, the
other operations like multiplexer (MUX), demultiplexer (DMUX)
and demodulation are achieved in the radio frequency domain [82].
2413

Fig. 13  Simplified schematic of FSO WiMAX system
Fig. 14  Scenario of indoor VLC network
8.3 Worldwide interoperability for microwave access
(WiMAX)
An optical WiMAX transport system employs laser source and
SLM with the n-QAM-OFDM modulation signal. An optical
WiMAX transport system transmits QAM-OFDM signal over a
free-space link with the data rate of the order 10 Gbps. The Optical
WiMAX combines the advantages of optical and wireless
communication techniques and provides an efficient architecture
for FSO light wave data link due to its large data transmission
capability, longer range free-space transmission and proximity
repeatability of wavelength characteristic [82, 83]. In the OFDM
digital scheme, a channel is divided into n-number of narrowband
channels with pre-assigned appropriate carriers. OFDM improves
the overall transmission performance with effectively utilising the
spectral efficiency and robust dispersion rate. A highly coherent
and focused optical beam adopts the SLM to a large bandwidth
optical WiMAX transport system in a long range FSO data link. A
simplified schematic of an FSO-WiMAX transport system is
shown in Fig. 13. The optical source is directly modulated by an
additive white gaussian (AWG) output signal. This signal depends
on the data generated by a digital source, QAM-OFDM, and D/A
converter.
The modulated light is diverged and collimated by the
transmitting telescope and then emitted towards the receiving
telescope. The Rx optics collects the optical signal, focuses it on
the SLM and then on the high bandwidth photodiode. LNA is used
to amplify the electrical signal that gets digitised by an appropriate
A/D converter, and QAM demodulation, and then data decoding
and data error analysis are performed at the subsequent processes.
8.4 Visible light communication (VLC)
The revolution of solid-state indoor lighting replaces the classical
incandescent and fluorescent lamps by the LEDs at a rapid pace
[84, 85]. The advantages of this replacement, longer lifespan, lower
heat generation, multiple colour rendering, hundreds of THz of
license-free bandwidth, cost-effectiveness, high security, lower
time latency, easy-to-install, high speed switching etc. attract VLC
for communication as well. Adaption of LEDs is continuously
increasing and nearly 75% of all illumination is expected to be
provided by LEDs by the year 2030 [85]. Today's wireless optical
communication (WOC) technology aims to use these LEDs to
achieve indoor data transfer rate at the optical frequency which is
known as VLC [85, 86]. The developments of today's WOC pay an
equal amount of attention to VLC as well to resolve the limitations
of last-feet requirements particularly due to the bandwidth
requirement of indoor RF network. The high-speed switching
ability of LEDs is sufficient enough to modulate/encode the data in
2414
the emitting light by several methods. A broad bandwidth within
the visible optical spectrum (430–790 THz) is completely untapped
for communication and is available. A photodetector or image
sensor (array of photodetectors) with proper optics can collect the
modulated visible lights and decode the data. This means that the
LED can serve two purposes, room lighting and data
communication [87].
The commercial VLC system has the capability of achieving
data communication at the rate of 100 Mbps (in IEEE 802.15.7
standard) and up to several Gbps by research level systems [84–
88]. However, visible light cannot travel through most of the
objects and walls, and therefore requires the formations of small
cells without any inter-cell interference through walls and/or
partitions [84, 89]. Japan formed a VLC consortium in 2003 [90].
Two standards associated with VLC communication are JEITA
CP-1221 (VLC communication) and JEITA CO-1222 (visible light
ID system) [91]. Several types of research are improving on more
suitable optoelectronic devices, physical layer designs, application
layer protocols, and networking/broadcasting architectures for the
VLC systems. Since the VLC uses a wide spectrum of wavelength,
classical narrowband models designed for IR wavelength cannot be
directly considered to analyse its multipath dispersion. Since 1979,
many analyses on IR channel characteristic followed by Gfeller
and Bapst have been performed. Indoor multipath dispersion
characteristics analysis for VLC can be found in [87]. Barry's
model is modified by incorporating the wavelength and spectral
reflection coefficient to have more precise analysis of spectral
characteristic and power delay profile. In [87], Lee et al. found that
the VLC offers a large transmission bandwidth than the IR
communication. A simple scenario of VLC architecture is shown in
Fig. 14 where several electronic devices can be connected/
communicated via the visible light. The indoor VLC network is
connected to the external network infrastructure via either
backbone fibre or FSO link. In general, phosphor-based white LED
can be used to have a widespread visible light radiation or any
coloured LED for narrowband radiation. Two major classifications
of the VLC are the backbone to the device and between devices.
The indoor VLC network can be used for communication and
device control purpose as well. One of the main issues associated
with the VLC is power spectral distribution of reflectance of indoor
finishing materials (plastic wall, window mirrors, floor, ceiling,
plaster wall, and other objects) and multipath dispersion [87, 88].
The reflectivity of IR band is higher than the visible light band.
Multiple half/full duplex devices/nodes are connected based on
star/hybrid topology with time division multiplexing/frequency
division multiplexing/OFDM/WDM/ CDMA [86, 91]. A network
architecture with VLC for in-building and fibre link (as the
backbone) for MAN connectivity is proposed in [86]. An indoor
positioning system based on the VLC for hypermarket, exhibition
hall, hospital, airport, etc. is proposed in [88] to reach the target
quickly. A MIMO VLC system is proposed for future high data
rate indoor wireless communication [89]. A comprehensive study
of underwater VLC in terms of channel characterisation,
performance analysis, and effective transmission/reception method
is presented in [91]. Collimated laser beam and LED-based
underwater VLC network are also discussed. Owing to the
advantages of underwater VLC over the conventional acoustic
communication, it is more suitable for imaging, real-time video
transmission, underwater mobile devices connection and deploying
high throughput sensor network using optical orthogonal code
schemes [91]. The VLC technique would also be deployed in
optical indoor localisation, gesture recognition, smart phone
camera-screen communication, master–slave device data link,
peripherals/appliance control/interference, surveillance/guidance,
indoor networking/ broadcasting, in-flight optical communication,
high speed cellular mobile network etc. [84, 90, 91].
8.5 Vehicular VLC (VVLC)
Reducing road accident, traffic jam, and alleviating traffic
congestion via exchanging information among the vehicles moving
on the road became one of the most urgent requirements. To meet
this requirement, continuous tracking of every vehicle, updating
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Fig. 15  Scenarios of VVLC
Fig. 16  Scenarios of satellite FSO communication link: schematic, Tx/Rx
unit, inter, global, ring network, and deep-space satellite optical links [47,
96–100]
the road conditions, traffic density, nearest facilities, and providing
necessary guidance/information to the vehicle become significant.
Since already available RF spectrum is tightly crowded, finding an
alternative high bandwidth technology for this communication is
essential which one of the main researches is today. The
replacement of existing street florescent/sodium lamps by the
LEDs creates a pathway for power saving and intelligent transport
system that made the VVLC possible. A very active area of today's
research mainly focuses on vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-
backbone communication. In this technology, vehicles receive the
communication/entertainment/high-speed-internet data as well as
prior information about the ahead-traffic and/or road-conditions,
speed limit, safety, road-map, traffic congestions, accident details
and comfort from the street light placed along both sides of the
street. A vehicle communicates with a set of LEDs of one lamp
post and the link will be transferred (handover) to subsequent post
as the vehicle moves [90]. A distance-based probabilistic algorithm
using the correct estimate of switching time to handover the data
link is proposed and verified with simulation results in [90, 92, 93].
Aerial-to-ground cooperative vehicular networking with FSO, RF,
and visible light is proposed in [94]. Several models for the VVLC
channel have been proposed to study the channel gain, impulse
response, and root mean square delay spread in [95]. Overcoming
the security vulnerability of IEEE 802.11p standard of autonomous
vehicle platoon, the VLC-supported hybrid protocols are being
proposed in [96] to ensure the platform stability, security, and
vehicle manoeuvres track record without any packet missing. A
simple scenario of VVLC is shown in Fig. 15, where the LEDs are
mounted with the support of lamp posts along both sides of the
road. Every LED has a specific coverage zone on the road with a
slight intersection with a neighbouring region for the proper
handover of the data link of moving vehicles. The vehicle has to be
facilitated with suitable communication devices to talk to LED for
global information and front/rear/side vehicles for local
information. Direct vehicle-to-vehicle communication can be used
effectively as an adjective crush control. A vehicle can get or send
its location details to another authorised vehicle via VVLC
network. As shown in Fig. 15, every LED has to be connected to a
backbone network to access the global data corresponding to the
internet, entertainment, requested vehicle position details, traffic
IET Commun., 2019, Vol. 13 Iss. 16, pp. 2405-2419
© The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2019
condition, real-time road map etc. The backbone network may be
formed with fibre links, mini UAV networks and/or low earth orbit
(LEO) satellites [86, 90, 93, 96]. Once continuous internet
connectivity is established to the moving vehicle with VLC, the
realisation of the internet of everything (IoE) then becomes
possible. The VVLC supplies light to the street and global service
data to the vehicles. MIMO VVLC architecture will play a vital
role in the vehicle data/track management in the forthcoming 5G
communication arena [92].
Recent research focuses on the design of hybrid (RF–VLC)
communication which is more suitable in a highly dynamic
vehicular environment. Several issues associated with this hybrid
design, i.e. how these two different technologies would talk to each
other covering several aspects of ground, and air vehicles have to
be addressed. A study of propagation characteristic of these two
technologies for vehicular communication becomes significant.
More details on VVLC network design, communication protocol
development, associated communication standards, and hybrid
structures can be found in [92, 93].
9 Space optical communication
This section presents the scenarios, advantages, and achievements
in deep space optical satellite communication towards meeting the
future requirement of ultra-high-speed wireless communication.
The near future requirement of high bandwidth wireless
communication is possible only with ground-to-satellite, satellite-
to-ground, and inter-satellite FSO data links [47, 97, 98]. Any
signal (analogue/digital) becomes weaker when it travels through
the matter with suspended particles and the sheer volume of space,
and therefore the reliability and quality of communication which
depends on the signal becomes poor. Radio waves are mostly being
used as a carrier for space satellite communication. This RF waves
quickly get degraded as it travels long range which requires
developing widespread relay systems [98]. In the vast space
especially in space satellite communication and long-range Mars
missions, RF wave transmission is not adequate to address a
number of communication issues. The advantages of FSO systems,
i.e. concentrated and less degradable beam transmission, smaller
antennas, low cost, and higher volume of data, have attracted the
space scientists to use it as an alternative technology to deal with
and overcome the limitations of conventional RF transmission such
as low data rate and very high-power transmission. In FSO
communication, the encoded data is transmitted to the space
system via a tightly collimated optical beam. The demand for
communication data transmission market is ever increasing and it
cannot be fulfilled with existing crowded RF spectrum. As per the
NASA experiments, a test spacecraft could download a movie in
639 h via RF waves and the download time via FSO system is just
8 min [25, 98, 99].
Future long-range deep space satellite communications, reliable
high quantity of data (increased by 10× to 100×) connectivity,
advanced missions (live high definition video, telepresence, human
exploration beyond lunar etc.) are possible only with FSO systems
[97–99]. European Space Agency (ESA) replaces its existing RF
space communication systems by lasers aiming to improve and
transmit a high volume of information more effectively [98, 99].
The ESA proved that the FSO system can quickly return the
images of the earth to a ground station in order to immediately
activate the necessary disaster relief work. Europe recently
launched a satellite to collect the images from near earth satellite
and pass them to a ground station via a well collimated optical
beam. Europe also began developing a space data highway by
launching FSO up/down link-equipped communication satellite
(CS). Advancements in FSO sub-systems’ technology and their
developments opened a great hope to have a more sophisticated
laser-equipped space satellite optical communication [25, 98]. The
illustrations of different scenarios of satellite optical
communication links/network are shown in Fig. 16. In early 1990,
Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. transmitted a laser beam to a
reflector-mirror spacecraft positioned at an altitude of 350 km and
then reflected back to the ground station [98]. The collected optical
beam was used to estimate the beam intensity profile, i.e. mainly
2415

Fig. 17  Next generation FSO network: terrestrial optical fiber network,
optical ground station, LEO CS, medium earth orbit, an earth observation
satellite, and HAP-deep space satellite
Fig. 18  Next generation FSO network with DWDM access technique
temporal and spatial disturbances, as a function of atmospheric
turbulence (Cn2 ). In 1992, Galileo optical experiment transmitted a
pulsed laser beam to deep space vehicle from two ground stations
at California and New Mexico [98, 99]. Later, a duplex (earth-to-
moon and vice versa) laser link was demonstrated with
atmospheric turbulence effects mitigation systems. In 2008, an
optical link, at the data rate of 5.5 Gbps, between two LEO
satellites (Terra SAR-X and NFIRE) of total distance 5500 km has
been established [97, 98]. Out of several experiments conducted for
military and aerospace requirements, they have come up with
different possible deep space optical communication scenarios for
(i) airborne flight test system, (ii) laser cross link system, (iii)
optical deep space communication, (iv) stratospheric optical
payload experiment, (v) Mars laser communication, (vi) airborne
laser optical link etc. [47, 97]. In case of a laser uplink, the laser
beam immediately enters into near-ground atmosphere suffering
more due to turbulence and the distorted beam then travels a long
range in space to reach the satellite. However, in the downlink
scenario, a well-concentrated optical beam travels a long rage and
then gets distorted only within the earth atmosphere (typically 30  fibre optic communication technology can also be used in FSO
km). Thus, the atmospheric effect is more in uplink than in the
downlink. The major challenge in the inter-satellite data link is
beam pointing between two moving platforms and therefore
requires accurate PAT systems. As reported in [97, 100], many
types of micro-satellites, equipped with lasers for communication
and control, are being launched for high-precision earth
observation, research, education, telemedicine, military, mapping,
navigation, communication, and commercial purposes aiming to
make a breakthrough in conventional satellite communication
technology. In 2013, lunar laser communication demonstration
successfully established a 622 Mbps FSO link between moon and
earth. In 2019, NASA aims to launch a satellite equipped with an
optical data relay system to geostationary orbits. The ESA
deployed a serviceable optical data relay satellite at geostationary
orbits and launched another five LEO Sentinel satellite for optical
communications. Japan also plans for Japanese optical data relay
satellite systems. Several countries are planning and launching
optical technology-equipped satellites to develop high bandwidth
space data networks that can have several applications in water,
land, and space. High-throughput satellite launching programmes
have been started in several countries to use Ka band and start
service at the capacity of 100 Gbps. To handle this high capacity, it
is required to improve the data arrival rate at the gateway, i.e.
earth-to-satellite feeder links to resolve the demand for high-
capacity next generation communications. In the small optical
transponder (SOTA) programme, developing an ultra-compact,
typically 50 kg, imaging satellite was the main goal, which was
successfully completed at a reasonable cost and the same was
launched into LEO in 2014. The images taken by this satellite was
sent to the ground station via the optical link of the 1.5-micron
laser beam for the first time. This satellite image data and quantum
2416
key distribution basic experiments were accessed by various
countries during its orbit and international optical satellite test was
demonstrated till 2016. AO with very precise PAT and mass
stabilising system played an important role in this SOTA
programme. Several space research agencies are also conducting
researches on debris’ (rocket parts, decommissioned satellites and
fragments) exact orbits determining, long-range communication,
ranging in deep space (beyond 380,000 km), global positioning,
collection of weather data, inter-satellite optical communication,
spacecraft guiding, weather forecast, and ground mapping using
optical beam. Demonstrating a 10 Gbps optical satellite equipped
with high-speed communication with advanced laser instruments in
2021 is the main goal of several space research agencies including
NICT [97]. The authors of [9–13, 23–26, 97, 98] provide
exhaustive coverage of various challenges and their mitigation
techniques for deep space optical communication.
10 Next generation FSO communication network
In general, over the past few decades, communication technology
has gained incredible developments to address the requirements in
widespread adoptions [83, 101]. The FSO system was mainly
developed, demonstrated and projected as an alternative wireless
communication technology to meet the high data rate requirement
and to address the issues of interference and security limitations of
existing RF communication systems. The transmission optics at the
Tx station has the control over the optical beam width, thus, the
control of inter FSO channel interference would be possible by
appropriate selection of beam width. A suitable RoFSO and/or
RF/FSO has to be designed as a hybrid approach (one can back up
the other) to avail the strength and compensate the weakness of
both channels particularly for the next generation network
applications of MIMO battlefield environment monitoring,
intelligent and highly secured data transportation and tele-surgery
systems [101, 102]. An expected next generation communication
network structure is shown in Fig. 17. Almost, all ground stations,
terrestrial links, and space satellite links are connected with the
optical carrier with the high data transmission rate. One attractive
application field of this structure is to establish a heterogeneous
(cable, RF, FSO, and optical fibre) network to provide ultra-high
bandwidth wireless service in ground and space [102]. The
optoelectronic components that are being used for high bandwidth
systems since both pursue almost similar transmission protocols
and modulation techniques. Furthermore, in both cases, the data
carrier is the well collimated optical beam. As an example, the 100 
Gbps optical source, MZM modulator, dense WDM (DWDM),
optical detector etc., can be used in both fibre optic and FSO
communication technologies. This ensures the possibility of
integrating the FSO systems with other conventional high data rate
communication networks. In the present scenario, the design of
DWDM full-optical FSO links becomes significant to transfer the
data arriving from various service sources such as terrestrial digital
television, 5G cellular signals, WLAN, and innovative wireless
services. A simple structure of the next generation wireless
network with DWDM is shown in Fig. 18.
Three main FSO architectures required for the next generation
FSO networks are: (i) a dedicated high bandwidth point to point (in
ground or ground to space) data link, (ii) redundant and high
reliable mesh architecture with provision to easy addition/deletion
of nodes and (iii) limited nod broadcasting, i.e. single input
multiple output architecture. Highly matured and massive
production subsystem models associated with the opto-electronic
components of this robust architecture now commercially exist.
Most of the FSO subsystems currently available consists of
optoelectronic devices same as fibre optic cables communication
and therefore they can work with all existing protocols. For high
data rate carriers, the interoperability within the multifaceted
networks with their respective communication protocols is a
crucial and open challenging research field.
Few commercial systems are coming up with inbuilt
asynchronous transfer mode, however, most of the FSO systems
preferred to work protocol-independent, i.e. protocol-transparent-
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approach for flexible deployment and service cost reduction [101–
103] to attract more nodes. Thus, enhancing the existing network
structure with FSO data link and/or establishing the suitable FSO
communication system is essential to meet the future data transfer
demands. The researches on next-generation network continuously
suggest for improved reliability for which mesh network
architecture has to be built due to the combined advantages of ring
and star architectures. A performance investigation of FSO data
link using rectangular partially coherent flat-topped beam has been
recently analysed. The analysis is based on numerical values for
power-in-bucket, SNR and BER considering atmospheric losses
due to the absorption, scattering, and turbulence. In [103], an
innovative approach to mitigate the atmospheric turbulence effect-
induced fading using the technique of all-optical relaying and
intermediate repeater terminals is demonstrated. Long range
multihop FSO data links are proposed and experimentally tested
with the advanced relaying techniques of optical amplify and
forward, and optical regenerate and forward concepts. Reliability
of the optical communication system is also discussed using
polarisation shift keying modulated FSO systems. Optimisation of
FSO-based next generation network for cellular backhauling to
improve reliability is also investigated. A detailed study, design,
and results on these analyses can be found in [47, 83–103].
11 Research challenges of FSO systems: IoT/IoE,
5G, mobile, THz spectrum, and quantum
communication
Today's numerous multimedia applications and wireless services
require high-data-rate door-to-door network architectures. This
requirement demands 5G and beyond wireless services. FSO
communication offering an ultra-wide range of the license-free
spectrum is the most promising viable solution since the existing
RF system is inadequate to fulfil the required data transmission rate
of 5G wireless services. FSO communication at the data rate of
100 Gbps has already been demonstrated and it can offload
tremendous data traffic of existing RF network-based applications/
services. Today's commercial FSO system can cover a link-range
varying from several nm (inter-integrated circuit optical link) to
10,000 km (ground-satellite optical link). Owing to the extremely
high demand of increased wireless capacity with rapidly growing
applications of smart mobile phones, cloud big-data handling,
machine learning/artificial intelligence, electronic devices, internet
of things (IoT), IoE etc., developing a capable network
infrastructure becomes a challenging task. To meet the tremendous
requirements of increased operation and infrastructure cost,
technology revolution to address these issues is needed.
Augmented networks based on fibre together with FSO can provide
solutions to overcome these challenges. The network topology can
be flexible and will be able to adapt quickly to change in traffic,
data distribution, power consumption and characteristics of specific
applications. FSO would provide an easy way to maintain and scale
up data centres. The design challenges of FSO in near future
communication network infrastructure are summarised as follows:
(i) The need for FSO communication for 5G – The next data
transmission standard in mobile networks will definitely be the 5G
communication offering new services with ultra-high system
capacity, ultra-low latency, and massive device connectivity
maintaining an extremely high level of security and privacy and
ultra-low energy consumption. This will require ultra-dense mixed
networks with tremendously increased mobile data volume per area
and number of connected wireless devices and high-backhaul
connectivity. This concept is immediately useful for the
development of IoT having connectivity with the devices at the
respective data rates.
(ii) FSO communication for 5G and IoT – It is therefore obvious
that FSO is the most promising technology to support broadband
next generation 5G networks and gigantic connectivity of IoT. It is
also required that such a high data rate communication system
should have the capability of integrating ultra-dense heterogeneous
networks/devices. The pico and femto cells are formed in order to
have smaller cells so as to increase the capacity of the network in
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5G and beyond communications. Recently developed VLCs, light
fidelity (Li-Fi) and optical camera communications (OCC) can
address the requirements of high capacity backhaul support and
pico/femto cell hotspot service. In short, the IoT massive
connectivity can be solved with FSO technology to provide
gigantic connectivity via low power LED and VLC technologies
[14, 103, 104].
(iii) New detector development – High speed detectors are one of
the key challenges in using photons, i.e. light as the carrier for
wireless services. First and foremost, the challenge is how to
effectively collect the data carrying optical beam and accurately
point it to a tiny optical detector at the Rx station? Facebook
research groups developed an alternative device, instead of
classical optics, using fluorescent materials to collect and focus the
light into a tiny optical detector. This device with a surface area of
126 cm2 is capable of receiving light from all directions, i.e. it is an
isotropic optical detector. This concept is extremely useful for
solving PAT problems in the air at very high speed. By
incorporating the OFDM, the researchers transmitted more than 2 
Gbps data which could be developed for data transfer to more than
10 Gbps using materials operating in the IR spectrum.
(iv) Growing interest and trends – FSO communication can
provide high data rate especially in LOS connections and short
distance applications which may be categorised into indoor and
outdoor applications. Some of the applications FSO can support are
indoor networks to connect devices inside offices, homes,
hospitals, conference rooms etc., which involve short distances
between transceivers with fixed or slowly moving devices such as
inside a shopping centre, transmitting and processing of patient
measurement data and bank offices which may require high
security. FSO transmission technology can support some of the
applications, e.g. (i) wireless sensor network (WSN), (ii) vehicle-
to-vehicle communications, and (iii) satellite interconnection to
connect satellites in space at extremely high data rate even at the
possible rate of 400 Tbps which FSO can offer [105, 106].
(v) FSO technologies for mobile communications and IoT – The
IoTs and Cloud are becoming current and future hot research areas
in the next decade affecting the way hundreds of billions connected
devices communicate. One of the important advanced solutions for
FSO is using the visible light with more than 1000 times the
modulation bandwidth of the radio-wave spectrum [107–109]. Li-
Fi is an emerging technology offering ultra-wide bandwidth
wireless communications using visible light technology. For indoor
environments, the number of radio transceivers can be significantly
reduced using Li-Fi technology and is promising for 5G
heterogeneous and beyond networks with a variety of applications
such as entertainment, education, manufacturing, hospitals, aircraft
cabins, nuclear plants etc. [110]. Some of the future FSO
applications also include mobile transport networks, both at mobile
backhaul and front haul levels, at the transport and access network
levels. Optimisation for establishing the FSO system for cellular
backhauling is researched in terms of cost and reliability metrics.
(vi) Some of the niche applications of VLC – Smart city (urban
connectivity to heterogamous wireless services and IoTs),
underwater (in particular situations and scenario, where radio could
not offer the solutions), power-line communication (to control
directly indoor artificial environmental lights, duplicating the
paradigm of Ethernet/Wi-Fi), organic VLC (OVLC) (to control a
number of organic devices using organic LED, and OPD and the
organic devices are incorporable (printable) on many other
products. Both FSO and VLC can provide physical systems to
ensure 5G networks, the concept of smart cities, with lots of things
in synergy to connect and reach. The optical wireless
communication technologies give an effective and real solution for
IoTs and beyond for the smart approach of internet-of-everything
(IoE) [84, 111, 112].
(vii) THz spectrum for future wireless technologies – The
feasibility of THz region of the spectrum can provide concrete
solutions for the data transmission in diverse situations and
environments, including non-LOS (NLOS) applications where
waves bounce off or reflected by walls and other objects. THz
wireless links can be applied to either indoors or outdoors
2417
communications including LOS and NLOS links at very high speed
and could, therefore, be new NLOS optical communication
medium.
(viii) Free-space and atmospheric quantum communications – The
quantum computing, internet connectivity, wireless services via
FSO and indoor optical channels are fetching a certainty with
recent research interests evidenced by both laboratory and field
demonstrations of quantum entanglement experiments in many
research universities in the world. One of the most important
aspects of the quantum communications is the applications to
achieve potential ultimate secure communications in atmosphere
and space. Optical wireless communications incorporating
quantum communications will benefit tremendously from this
quantum technology [31, 113].
12 Conclusion
Revolutions and developments of communication technologies
over the past several centuries right from the prehistoric mans’ fire
signals to today's space optical communication are presented in this
survey paper. Principles, advantages and significance of FSO
communication technology are described. Limitations, design
challenges and atmospheric turbulence disturbances in FSO
communication system and their mitigation techniques are
presented. State-of-art developments and worldwide achievements
on space optical communication are detailed. Advancements of
FSO technology on RoFSO, hybrid FSO/RF, WDM, SCM,
WiMAX transport systems, and visible/vehicular light
communications are presented. Research challenges in the next
generation FSO network infrastructure for the applications of
underwater optical communication, FSO-5G communication, FSO-
IoT/IoE interface and data transport, VLCs, Li-Fi, OCC, OVLC,
WSN, FSO for mobile communications and FSO-Quantum
communication are proposed.
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