Free Space Optic and mmWave Communications: Technologies, Challenges and Applications

Increasing demand in data-traffic has been addressed over the last few years. It is expected that the data-traffic will present the significant part of the total backbone traffic. Accordingly, much more transmission systems will be required to support this growth. A free space optic (FSO) communication is the greatest promising technology supporting high-speed and high-capacity transport networks. It can support multi Gbit/s for few kilometers transmission distance. The benefits of an FSO system are widespread, low cost, flexibility, immunity to electromagnetic field, fast deployment, security, etc. However, it suffers from some drawbacks, which limit the deployment of FSO links. The main drawback in FSO is the degradation in the signal quality because of atmospheric channel impairments. In addition, it is high sensitive for illumination noise coming from external sources such as sun and lighting systems. It is more benefit that FSO and mmWave are operating as a complementary solution that is known as hybrid FSO/mmWave links. Whereas the mmWave is susceptible to heavy rain conditions and oxygen absorption, while fog has no particular effect. This paper will help to better understand the FSO and mmWave technologies and applications operating under various atmospheric conditions. Furthermore, in order to improve the system performance and availability, several modulation schemes will be discussed. In addition to, the hybrid FSO/mmWave with different diversity combining techniques are presented. key words: free space optic, millimeter wave, wireless applications, losses, availability, turbulence, diversity combining, modulations and hybrid networks