Optical wireless ground- link attenuation statistics of fog and snow conditions

Optical wireless technology is a well known technology that found renewed interest for its numerous applications in ground-space and terrestrial communication scenarios. A well known disadvantage of optical wireless communication (involving ground-link) is its sensitivity on local weather conditions - primarily to fog, snow and clouds. This results in substantial loss of optical signal power over the communication channel (i.e., the troposphere). We provide here the optical signal attenuation statistics of the fog and snow conditions from an optical wireless ground-link installed at Graz, Austria and provide some useful analysis that can be handful and beneficial in order to evaluate this technology for ground-space future applications.