RF/FSO Default Links
Overview
Weather conditions can alter whether an RF system or an FSO system is more viable for a partiular communication application at any point in time. RF systems have weaker performance in the rain while FSO systems are more suscetible to fog and clouds. If weather conditions cause an FSO system to fail, it could be possible to include an RF system which can mitigate the failure by operating as a failover from the FSO link. The clear disadvantage of this approach is the extra cost associated with redundant links and the significantly reduced data rate of the RF link. An adaptive joint coding scheme wherein both systems are active could be implemented to ensure the RF and FSO systems will work together efficiently while saving channel bandwidth. [1]
Related Links
Article: Link allocation, routing and scheduling of FSO augmented RF wireless mesh networks
Article: On the performance of dual-hop mixed RF/FSO wireless communication system