Flexible high power Free Space Optical system for aircraft to ground communications

Nowadays Free Space Optical (FSO) systems are a promising approach for a variety of applications such as interconnection of network nodes and as rapidly deployable communication systems in disaster recovery situations. In particular deploying FSO technology for mobile links between Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and fixed Ground Stations (GS) introduces several interesting challenges. In this paper, we investigate the ability of a mobile FSO system to operate in different atmospheric conditions. Specifically, we report a detailed optical amplification model able to support a constant Quality of Service for different distances from 1 km up to 35 km at 10 Gbps with 1550 nm wavelength. A high power optical amplifier and a low noise optical amplifier with adaptive power controlled are proposed that are able to support different environment attenuation factors. An extensive analysis among different distances for the FSO configurations links considering the Bit Error Rate (BER), the Q factor, the received signal and noise is provided.