Characterization of free space optical data center channel

The existing wired intra data center (DC) networks suffer from traffic congestion, low scalability, low flexibility, and increasing power consumption. To solve this problem there is a need to move from wired to wireless intra DC connections. One of the technologies that could provide a solution for the next generation intra DC communication is the use of free space optical (FSO) communication. However, in DC networks there is turbulence that can affect performance of FSO communication. In this letter, we present a DC experiment that we performed to characterize the performance of the FSO intra DC turbulent channel. We found that the pdf of the received signal is lognormally distributed according to the theoretical predictions, and we received values of bit error rate less than 10⁻¹⁶ in all the areas of the DC, which is better than the desired minimum of 10⁻¹⁴ for DC communication. This means that the realization of FSO communication within a turbulence channel DC is possible with good performance. If the turbulence is strong, we can improve the performance by using different mitigation techniques or by using hybrid wired and FSO connections.