Comparing the fog effects on hybrid network using optical wireless and GHz links

Optical wireless link provides high bandwidth solution to the last mile access bottleneck. However, an appreciable high availability of the link is the basic requirement of any communication application. Free space optics (FSO) links are highly weather dependent and fog is the major attenuating factor reducing the link availability. Hybrid networks consisting of free space optics (FSO) link and back up link in the GHz frequency range renders high availability besides providing comparable data rates. The back up link should be nearly immune to fog attenuation for achieving carrier class availability. In this paper effects of fog on FSO and GHz frequency range links are studied so that frequencies with best complementary behaviour can be selected as a back up link.