Simulation and analysis of FSO/RF switch over for different atmospheric effects

The high bandwidth free space optics (FSO) links has the tremendous potential to fulfil future high data rate demanding communication application. However, its widespread growth has been hampered by reduced availability due to atmospheric effects. An alternate solution is to use back up link that offers acceptable data rate along with higher tolerance to weather influences. This requires intelligent switch over between two links depending upon the atmospheric attenuations. In this paper, the behaviour of hybrid network has been analyzed for different weather patterns like fog, rain and snow. The switch over performance has been analyzed for measured data of FSO link.