Empirical Relations for Optical Attenuation Prediction from Liquid Water Content of Fog

Abstract

Simultaneous measurements of the liquid water content (LWC) and optical attenuation have been analyzed to predict optical attenuation caused by fog particles. Attenuation has been measured at two different wavelengths, 830 nm and 1550 nm, across co-located links. Five months measured data have been processed to assess power-law empirical models, which estimate optical attenuation from the LWC. The proposed models are compared with other published models and are demonstrated to perform sufficiently well to predict optical attenuation if the LWC values are available.

Keywords

• Free-Space optical links
• Liquid water content
• Optical attenuation
• Drop size distribution
• Aerosols