Implementation and Analysis of Load Balancing Switch Over for Hybrid Wireless Network

Wireless optical communication links has the great potential to serve for an increasing demand for high bandwidth transmission capabilities. However, the widespread deployment of wireless optical communication system has been hampered by reliability or availability issues related to atmospheric variations. Among atmospheric effects on wireless optical link, fog is the most important factor. It is the most deleterious factor for achieving high availability in Free Space Optics (FSO), causing significant attenuation for considerable amount of time. Another technology offering negligible fog attenuation and acceptable data rates is license free ISM band, that can be used as back up link. However, a switch-over mechanism is required for optimal selection of any link depending on weather patterns, link quality, and data rate. A load balancing implementation of switch-over is presented in this paper and behavior of hybrid network is simulated for measured data of more than one year.