Study on Pointing Error and Atmospheric Turbulence in FSO for 5G and Beyond Communication

Free-Space Optical (FSO) communication offers a number of advantages for which it is a promising solution for high-speed, high-capacity data transmission in 5G and Beyond networks. However, its performance is severely affected by pointing error and atmospheric turbulence, which leads to signal degradation, high bit error rate (BER), intensity fluctuations, beam wander, and attenuation. This paper presents simulated studies on performance analysis of an FSO for 5G and beyond communication. This study aims to highlight the pros and cons of applications of FSO for 5G and beyond communication. We have simulated the transmission of quadrature amplitude modulation-Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (QAM-OFDM) signals under different atmospheric conditions, weather conditions, and different pointing error scenarios. The performance of the FSO system is investigated for different weather conditions. The system performance was analyzed based on bit error rate (BER), quality of eye diagrams, and standard Q-factor. The FSO distance in clear weather and in heavy fog condition found to be approximately 4km and 1 km respectively. Whereas the system performance degrades significantly under cirrus cloud conditions where the range has fallen upto 50 meters. The system performance is analyzed for different misalignment, different weather conditions and for atmospheric turbulence conditions. The proposed system is efficient enough for high data rate transmission along with high low BER for different environmental scenarios