FSO-based 5G mobile cellular systems for urban canyons

Abstract

Over the last few years, there has been a rapid increase in the number of people who are using high data rate services and applications. To be able to support the ever-increasing data rates to the end users, the time has come to consider other technologies which use the upper parts of electromagnetic spectrum other than the Radio Frequency (RF) spectrum. One such technology which can be used as an alternative to RF is Free-Space optical (FSO) communications. It provides higher bandwidth and improved Bit Error Rate (BER) performance because of negligible multipath and fading effect. In this article, the performance of an RF system and an FSO system using BPSK-subcarrier intensity modulation (BPSK-SIM) in a weak turbulent atmosphere are compared. It is found that from simulation results, FSO system has a performance gain of 62% over RF for achieving a BER of 10−5.