Combined measured characteristics of microwave radiometer and free-space optical link

The paper introduces a utilization of a radiowave radiometer based subsystem for on-line monitoring and prediction of actual atmospheric influences for adjacent free space optical link. A measurement campaign has been accomplished with focus on atmospheric effects relating with reliability of free-space optical links. Together with the optical link, the microwave radiometer and meteorological stations were accommodated to the campaign in order to observe noise temperature changes joined by time variant fluctuations of temperature, humidity, pressure and refractivity. Combined characteristics of atmospheric parameters were evaluated and the metric based on noise temperature was proposed for the precipitation detection preceding optical link fades.