Wireless optical transmission of fast ethernet, FDDI, ATM, and ESCON protocol data using the TerraLink laser communication system

Abstract

The TerraLink laser communication (lasercom) system was developed as a cost-effective, high-bandwidth, wireless alternative to fiber optic transmission. The advantages of lasercom over fiber optic cabling are primarily economic. However, free-space lasercom is subject to atmospheric effects, such as attenuation and scintillation, which can reduce link availability and may introduce burst errors not seen in fiber transmission. The TerraLink transceivers use large receive apertures and multiple transmit beams to reduce the effects of scintillation. By designing the lasercom link with sufficient margin for atmospheric attenuation and scintillation, a bit error rate (BER) of 10⁻⁹ or better can be achieved. Since we designed the TerraLink transceivers to be eye-safe at the transmit aperture, each system is range-limited. Link power budgets for the TerraLink systems are presented, and link margin data are shown that quantitatively describe how the effective laser link range varies in different weather conditions. Since the TerraLink transceivers act as simple repeaters, they are protocol-independent. Examples of TerraLink installations transmitting wireless fast ethernet (125 Mbits/s), fiber distributed data interface (FDDI) (125 Mbits/s), asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) (155 and 622 Mbits/s), and Enterprise Systems Connection (ESCON) (200 Mbits/s) protocol data are presented. © 1998 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers.