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2011 4 International Conference on Mechatronics (ICOM), 17-19 May 2011, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Rain Fade Analysis for Practical Free Space Optic

Link in Tropical Region
Wajdi Al-Khateeb , Md Rafiqul Islam, Myat Tun Oo

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering,

International Islamic University Malaysia,
Jalan Gombak, 53100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
E-mail: azhar.sla@gmail.com

Abstract— Attenuation due to rainfall can severely degrade the
FSO links operating under tropical weather. It restricts the
distance of FSO communication systems and limits the
availability for line-of-sight terrestrial link. Practical FSO link
has been setup, monitored and analyzed. A commercially
available FSO system was installed at 800 m length together
with rain fall intensity measurement facility at IIUM Kuala
Lumpur campus. This paper is focused on the effect of rain on
the FSO link. The rain attenuation on link has been
synchronized in real time with rain fall intensity meter to
enable link measurement. The measured rain intensity data
was used to compare with ITU-R rain attenuation prediction
model to validate the model. The measured rain attenuation on
link was compared with that predicted by ITU-R prediction
model recommended for the microwave link
Keywords-FSO,Aailability prediction; Rain intensity.
I. INTRODUCTION
Free-space optical communication link include the use of
optical links across the space between two points. It is
estimated that in metropolitan areas, optical fiber links can
cost as much as US$200,000.00 per kilometer, and 85% of
this amount is spent on excavation and installation. On the
other hand, the installation cost of an FSO system is about
20% of that of a fiber-based system[3].The FSO systems can
operate at rates up to 1 to 100 Gb/s depending on the wave
length and modulation technique; it has the low system
complexity. The commercial FSO systems are designed to
operate in the infrared region of the electromagnetic
spectrum, at wavelengths of 850 nm and 1550nm depend the
application.
There was not much analysis that has been done about
rain affect on FSO link attenuation in tropical regions and
hence there is no suitable model for predicting availability
of FSO link due to rain impact [7]. There was a Trial-based
Study of Free Space Optics Systems in Singapore in 2002 in
which various means that can attenuate the FSO link was
tested and analyzed including the attenuation of the FSO
link due to rain. It was found that the overall FSO link
attenuation was due to rain impact. However, there are two
main parameters that determine the link performance; fade
margin and transmission distances are design parameters
critical to ensure the reliability of a FSO link. Study was
done using 3 vendor with 6 different types of FSO devices
for the period of three months where only 4 Rain Events
with Rainfall Rate exceeding 60mm/hr and 2 Rain Event
exceeding 96mm/hr were recorded and tested [6].
II. RAIN STATISTIC
The rain fall rate has been measured in USM for 5 years.
The measurements were taken continuously from 1st January
2002 to 31st December 2006. Five years of rain rate
distributions are obtained at USM [1] and it is shown in
Figure1.

The availability of free space optics (FSO) systems

depends on weather conditions especially rain in tropical
weather. Attenuation due to rainfall intensity has the great
impact on free space optic system as inferred laser that use
in FSO system is vulnerable to weather effect. It is affected
mostly due to rainfall, snow, scattering and scintillation. In a
tropical region, like Malaysia, where excessive rainfall is a
common phenomenon throughout the year, the knowledge Figure 1: Annual rain rate distribution of rain rate exceeded
of the rain attenuation is extremely required for the design of measured in Malaysia [1].
a reliable terrestrial and earth space communication link at a
particular location.

Project sponsored by E-Science Project (MOSTI)

978-1-61284-437-4/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE

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2011 4 International Conference on Mechatronics (ICOM), 17-19 May 2011, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

III. ATTENUATION DUE TO RAIN FALL PREDICTION MODEL area because infrared laser light will travel and gradually
When the size of the irregularities due to precipitation increasing its size in the form of circular shape. In figure 2,
becomes important compared to the wavelength, the wave is the beam area is the total transmitted beam area at the
attenuated by reflection and refraction. Attenuation due to receiver side.
rain, independent of the wavelength, is a function of the rain
intensity R (in mm/h) according to the following equation
[3].

Arain attenuation (dB/km) = aRb (1)

A is rain attenuation and R is rain intensity and a and b are

frequency factors and value of a at 1.076 and b at 0.67 is
widely recommended for FSO which has very high
frequency and that is out of a and b allocation graph.
Attenuation A is meant for only 1 km and it is needed to Figure 2: The beam divergence
multiply with effective path length in order to calculate the
attenuation due to rain that has the range of more or less
than one km distances [5].
(5a)
A total path attenuation = A * Deff (2a)

Deff = d* r (2b) dB = θ *D (5b)

Where A is attenuation for 1 km and Deff is effective path where θ is divergence angle of transmitter and D is distance
length. d is actual path length and r is reduction factor and between transmitter and receiver. Receiver len’s Area is
done with simple calculation of area of a circle.
defined as followed [5];

(6)

(3a) dR is the diameter of the receiver aperture. For microwave,

and Free Space Path loss (FSL) is necessary to calculate the loss
and the same principle will be applied for the FSO where
do = 35e- 0.015 R0.01 (3b) FSL will be replaced by the Geometrical Loss. The
transmitted Beam area at receiver side is larger than receiver
Path attenuation exceeded for other time percentages can be aperture. Out of big beam area at receiver side, received
calculated by multiplying A0.01 by factors of 0.12, 0.39 and signal will be only part of it according to the receiver lens
2.14 for 1%, 0.1% and 0.001% respectively according to area aperture.
following equation[5];

(7)
(4)

Where has been shown above, Ap is desired attenuation and B. Link Margin of the free space optic
p is also desired degree of unavailability. By using the above
formula, we can calculate the other rail fall rate as follow. . Knowing how well the receiver utilizes this power, and
more importantly, how reliable the communication link will
be over the anticipated distance is also important. It is
IV. FREE SPACE OPTIC LINK MARGIN CALCULATION desirable to have a larger link margin than the minimum
nominal received power level to make the link more reliable
There is a need to calculate the link budget of the free space
so that fade margin is available.
optic link system. The link margin analysis for FSO systems
is the most important factor in FSO systems to look at the
signal power available at the receiver after the signal reaches
Link Margin (FM) = TotalsysGain - TotalsysLost (8a)
the opposite location. It is required to know the fade margin
of the system in order to predict the attenuation due to rain.
TotalsysGain= Tx power + Rx sensitivity (8b)

A. Propogation of the link TotalsysLost = Equipment loss + Geometric loss +

Beam area at intended destination can be calculated by using Additional loss (8c)
the formula of the area of circle and also the receiver lens
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2011 4 International Conference on Mechatronics (ICOM), 17-19 May 2011, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Additional loss is consider in this paper as loss dut to rain

and equipment lost includes fiber cable lost that connects to
link head to optical management device, management device
itself and some of electrical lost inside link head [2].

V. EXPERIMENTAL SET UP
The experiment includes of the two major part;
communication link and rain meter. In communication, free
space optical communication link has been set up for 800 m
distance and rain meter has been set up at the location near
to FOS link.

A. Optical system set up

The optical transmitter and receiver at both sides use the Figure 3:Setup 1 flight-manager (SNMP)
light point flight strata 155 link head. Light Pointe wireless
optical systems communicate using multiple beams of
infrared light (invisible to the human eye). The systems
require true line-of-sight between locations. The system
operate at 850 nm optical wavelengths so that spectrum or
Radio Frequency licensing is not required [4].Table 1
summarized the operational and general manufacturer data.

Table 1: Characteristic of FSO device

Name Type
light point Flight Strata 155E
Description four Tx,four Rx system
Figure 4: Setup 2 Direct PC (mobile application)
Dimensions 11.8 * 11.8 * 25 inches
30.0 *30.0 * 64.0 cm
Power consumption MaX.20 W
Bandwidth 1.5 to 155 Mbps
Output wavelength 850 nm
Beam divergence 2.0 mrad
Laser Output Power 4*6 (24) mW

Optical receive power SM -8 to -31 dBm

MM -14 to -30 dBm

Optical transmit power SM -8 to -15 dB m

MM -14 to -22 dBm
Figure 5: Installation of the FSO link

Figure 3 to Figure 5 show the FSO system set up at the

sender and receiver side. We set up the system in two
different ways; one is SNMP setup and second is direct Pc.
Flight manager is fix application that both link heads will be
fixed at certain place and monitoring of the link will be done
by using the interface device like modem call flight
manager. Optical management cable from link head will go
into flight manager and Ethernet cable form flight manager
will be connected to network. Orion SNMP network
manager software will be using as user inter face for the
devices. as for setup 2,direct pc, optical management cable
from link head will directly go to optical management
interface and it converters the optical signal to data signal .
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2011 4 International Conference on Mechatronics (ICOM), 17-19 May 2011, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Direct pc application can be set up anywhere since it does

not need the network.

Figure 8: Data logger

Figure 6: Map for two building

The primary link’s set up will be between two buildings; one

is E1 engineering and the other is hostel at IIUM Gombak
campus. The distance is 800 m long.

B. Rain gauge system set up

In order to measure the rain attenuation, there is a need
to measure the rain intensity. “Young Bucket” rain gauge
and Nexsens data logger hardware and software are being
used to measure rain fall. The Young Tipping Bucket Rain
Gauge has been used to measure the rain fall rate and that
meets the specifications of the world meteorological
organization (WMO) The design uses a proven tipping
bucket mechanism for simple and effective rainfall
measurement. The bucket geometry and material are Figure 9: User inerface for rain gauge
specially selected for maximum water release, thereby
reducing contamination and errors. Figure 7, Figure 8 and VI. RESULT AND ANALYSIS
Figure 9 show the complete rain gauge system.
Three days monitoring of the FSO links and rain meter
from 26 November 2010 to 29 November 2010 has been
displayed in figure 8 and Figure 9. As it can be seen in both
figures that attenuation of the link and increment of rain rate
occurs at the same time which confirm that FSO link has
attenuated due to rain fall. There are two events of high
attenuation; 7:30 pm 26 November and 11 pm 28
November.

Figure 7: Rain gauge

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2011 4 International Conference on Mechatronics (ICOM), 17-19 May 2011, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Figure 8: FSO link’s receive power level status from 26 to 29 Figure 10: Link attenuation at peak one according to rain intensity
November at that moment collected form Nexsen rain meter

Figure 9: Daily rain rate graph from 26 to 29 November, 2010

Rain data from the Nexsen rain meter and link attenuation
data from FSO link collected at UIA Malaysia and has been
analyzed. As it can be observed above, when rain intensity
increases, attenuation also increases accordingly. In Figure
10 and Figure 11, upper part of the graph is the rain intensity
and lower part of the graph is the attenuation of the FSO
communication link. At the highest rain intensity that is 90
mm/h, the receive signal level reaches to -38 dBm and that
is 18 dB of attenuation as shown in Figure 10. At the highest Fig.11: Link attenuation at peak two according to rain intensity at
rain intensity that is 48 mm/h, the receive signal level that moment collected form Nexsen rain meter
reaches to -29 dBm that is 8 dB of attenuation as shown in
Figure 11. Two raining events have been analyzed for verification
of ITU-R rain attenuation prediction model. Based on
Although there is attenuation in FSO link, there is no measured rain rate and regression co-efficients proposed by
significant reduce in bit error rate which is always 10E-10. ITU-R, the predicted rain attenuation has been compared
This is because the FSO link is completely error-free as long with measured value. It has been found that ITU-R rain
as the amount of signal attenuation does not exceed the prediction model can be used for FSO link communication
receiver threshold level since it is optical wireless and link with modification of regression coefficients for tropical
will be down as soon as signal attenuation reaches the weather. In this ITU-R model, the path reduction factor is
receiver threshold. Only at that point BER was showed 0.91 for path length of 800m. It is shown in Figure 12 and
which 10E-4 is then immediately link down and sometime Figure 13 the distance vs. availability vs. rain intensity from
even before BER result, the link is down. It was also made 100 m to 1 km and 1 km to 10 Km.
the same conclusion about the bit-errors rate test for FSO
link in Trial-based Study of Free Space Optics Systems in
Singapore [6].
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2011 4 International Conference on Mechatronics (ICOM), 17-19 May 2011, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

for 1 km but more than 80 dB is required for 10 km link due

to rain fade in order to achieve 99.99% availability.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors are very grateful to MIMOS BERHAD,
Research Management Centre, International Islamic
University Malaysia and Ministry of Science, Technology
and Innovation (MOSTI) for supporting the project by
research grant.
REFERENCE

1. M.S.J. Singh, S.I.S. Hassan and M. F. Ain (2007), Rainfall

Attenuation and Rainfall Rate Measurements in Malaysia
Comparison with Prediction Models, American Journal of
Applied Sciences 4 (1): 5-7, 2007
Figure 12: Rain fade margin for different percentage of time in a
2. O. Bouchet, H. Sizun ,C. B.,Frédérique de Fornel,Pierre-Noël
year with path lengths from 0.1 to 1 km.
Favennec(2006), Free-Space Optics:Propagation and
Communication, 2004 by Hermes Science/Lavoisier French
and 2006 by ISTE Ltd, USA
3. P. B. Harboe and J. R. Souza, Free Space Optic
Communication Systems: A Feasibility Study For
Deployment In Brazil, Journal of Microwaves and
Optoelectronics, Vol. 3, N.o 4, April 2004.
4. Light point (2005), FlightStrata 155 E Manual
5. International Telecommunication Union (2003),
Characteristics of precipitation for propagation modeling,
2003 Recommendation ITU-R P.837- 4.
6. J. T. Ong., Trial-Based Study of Free-Space Optics Systems in
Singapore,2002 Info-Communications Development
Authority of Singapore,( Oct 2002)
7. J.T. Ong, K.I. Timothy, J.H. Chong, and S.V.B. Rao, “Heavy
Rain Effects on the Propagation of Free Space Optical Links
in Singapore”, Twelfth International Conference on Antennas
and Propagation 2003 (ICAP 2003), 2003, Vol 1, pp. 365- 368

Figure 13: Rain fade margin for different percentage of time in a

year with path lengths from 1.5 to 5 km.

Based on measured rain attenuation with link margin of

23 dB according to our FSO transmitter and receiver, the
availability of 800 m distance is 99.993% and it is extended
to determine the availability of FSO link for longer
distances. The availability of current experimental FSO
setup is 99.9 % for 3 km distance, 99.8% for 5 km distance
and 99.5% for 10 km distance.

VII. CONCLUSION
Rain is the main factor in the design of FSO systems
operating in tropical regions. Free space optical link system
has been established over 800 m distance and attenuation
due to rain has been measured and analyzed. The rain
intensity of 1 minute integration time has been recorded
which is time synchronized with measured attenuation data.
Two raining events have been analyzed for validation of
ITU-R rain attenuation prediction model. It has been found
that ITU-R rain prediction model can be used for FSO with
modification of regression coefficients for tropical weather.
Rain fade margins are also investigated for FSO links up to
10 km length. It is observed that margin of 25 dB is needed