@article{ijp20261423,
author={{Soro, Wongnigu¨¦ Allassane and Soumahoro, Amadou and Kon¨¦, Douatia and Kamagat¨¦, Aladji},
title={Characterization of UAV-Based Free-Space Optical (FSO) Channel Under Real Atmospheric Conditions in the Tropical Savanna Region of Korhogo, Northern C?te d'Ivoire},
journal={International Journal of Physics},
volume={14},
number={2},
pages={36--47},
year={2026},
url={https://pubs.sciepub.com/ijp/14/2/3},
issn={2333-4576},
abstract={Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-assisted free-space optical (FSO) communication is a promising solution for rapidly deployable, high-capacity wireless networks. However, realistic channel characterization in tropical environments remains challenging because atmospheric attenuation, turbulence, pointing errors, and angle-of-arrival (AoA) fluctuations are often investigated independently and rarely using long-term site-specific meteorological data. This paper presents a unified statistical framework for modeling a UAV-assisted FSO link under the tropical savanna climate of Korhogo, northern C?te d¡¯Ivoire. The proposed model jointly incorporates weather-dependent attenuation caused by rain, fog, humidity, and dust, M¨¢laga-distributed atmospheric turbulence, pointing errors, and AoA fluctuations within a heterodyne-detection decode-and-forward relay architecture. Atmospheric attenuation parameters are derived from six years (2020¨C2025) of meteorological observations collected by the Korhogo station of the National Meteorological Agency (ANAM), enabling realistic channel characterization. Closed-form channel statistics are employed to evaluate the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and bit-error rate (BER). The results show seasonal atmospheric attenuation ranging from 0.81 dB/km during the dry season to 3.10 dB/km under severe rainy conditions. Increasing the UAV altitude from 200 m to 500 m extends the communication range from 2.5 km to 4.5 km for an SNR threshold of 10 dB, while the reliable transmission distance at a BER of 10?3 increases from 2.5 km to 3.2 km. More importantly, the analysis reveals a distance-dependent altitude trade-off. Beyond approximately 5 km, humidity-induced attenuation and beam divergence outweigh turbulence mitigation, challenging the common assumption that higher UAV altitudes always improve FSO performance. These findings provide practical design guidelines for deploying reliable UAV-assisted FSO systems in tropical environments.},
doi={10.12691/ijp-14-2-3}
publisher={Science and Education Publishing}
}