Analysis of the effect of rainfall intensity in Jakarta and Tangerang to the performance of free space optics communication system

Free Space Optics (FSO) or optical wireless communications is an optical communication technology that uses transmission of light in free space to transmit data between two points. Similar to fiber optics, FSO communications offer enormous data capacity. This paper reports the measurement of light attenuation by typical rainfall in Jakarta area, especially in Slipi. An empirical model developed using the measurement results was then used to examine the performance of fictitious FSO systems which were assumed to be installed in buildings at Pacific Place, Jakarta and UPH Karawaci Campus, Tangerang through evaluation of loss, attenuation, and BER under typical local tropical rainy season using the data of BMKG (Indonesian Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Body). The results show that from January to April 2010, the FSO system between two buildings at Pacific Place will have a BER which fluctuated between 10^-13 (without rain) and 4.4 ×10^-9 (heavy rain, dated April 5, 2010). Meanwhile, the system between Building B and Building D, in UPH Karawaci Campus will have a BER which fluctuated between 10^-13 (without rain) and 4.8 × 10^-8 (heavy rain, dated March 8, 2010). Those figures indicate that typical FSO system performs very well in those area even under typical tropical rainy season.