FREE SPACE OPTICS (FSO) ABSTRACT There is a certain amount of disconnect between the perception and reality of Free

Space Optics (FSO), both in the marketplace and in the technical community. In the marketplace, the requirement for FSO technology has not grown to even a fraction of the levels predicted a few years ago. In the technical community, proposed solutions for the limitations of FSO continue to miss the mark. The main commercial limitation for FSO is that light does not propagate very far in dense fog, which occurs a non-negligible amount of the time. There is no known solution for this problem (other than using microwave or other modality backup systems), and therefore FSO equipment has to be priced very competitively to sell in a marketplace dominated by copper wire, fiber optic cabling and increasingly lower cost and higher bandwidth wireless microwave equipment. Expensive technologies such as adaptive optics, which could potentially increase equipment range in clear weather, do not justify the added cost when expected bad weather conditions are taken into account. INTRODUCTION The concept of optical wireless communications has been used for millennia, examples including smoke signals and semaphore flags. In 1880, Alexander Graham Bell patented the photo phone, which modulated light reflected from the sun with a voice signal and transmitted that across free space to a solid-state detector. Thus was born the first Free Space Optics (FSO) link. Given that Bell described the photo phone as the greatest invention I have ever made; greater than the telephone, we can see that the hype for FSO is also nothing new. Alas, the weather availability of the photo phone was less than 50%, as it required direct sunlight for operation. THE MARKET FOR FSO During 2000 and 2001, a number of analysts put out reports trying to quantify the size of the worldwide Free Space Optics market, and predicting its future growth. Typical of these reports was one put out by the Strategies Group in 2001 entitled Free-Space Optics: Global Trends, Positioning, and Forecasts. Typically the projections made in 2001 were lower and had slower growth curves than those made in 2000. Still, the global market size predicted by this report was $118M in 2000, $250M in 2001, $425M in 2002, $690M in 2003, $1,074M in 2004, $1,536M in 2005 and $2,031 M in 2006. Before using these or similar numbers to raise capital for a new FSO company, it is worth pointing out that these projections have no basis in reality, and even the supposedly historic numbers are wildly off base. It is most likely (in our opinion based on our experience) that the actual current annual worldwide market for FSO equipment is between $15M and $30M, with most systems installed by enterprise users. While significant growth is possible if telecommunications carriers or Internet service providers adopt the technology, to this date that growth has not materialized. RELIABILITY FSO equipment, when installed properly, is highly reliable from an equipment failure standpoint. The leading worldwide provider of FSO equipment with over 5,000 links sold has been able to compile statistics on system reliability, and standard products have a mean time between failures of greater than 10 years. Figure 2 shows pictures of two typical installations. On the left, two FSO products are installed for short-range links in New York City, demonstrating that multiple FSO terminals can work in close proximity without interference. On the right, An FSO link is installed over a 2500m range in Costa Rica. Nearby microwave equipment is not a problem. Typical installations are outdoors. By mounting to solid parts of the building, and by appropriate choice of transmitter divergence, active tracking systems are not necessary. In spite of equipment robustness and reliability, in most locations with link ranges beyond 200 meters, there may be weather conditions, which will cause temporary link outages. The FSO community uses the term availability to describe the percentage of time that a customer could expect a link to operate in a particular location.

Fig. 2. Typical FSO installations in NYC range 120m and Costa Rica range 2500m. FSO can be mounted within close proximity to each other and other equipment such as RF antennas etc.