Free-Space Optics (FSO) is a wireless optical technology that enables optical transmission of data, voice and video communications through the air, up to 10 Gbps of data, based on the use of the free space (the atmosphere) as transmission medium and low power lasers as light sources.
Quality and performance of FSO links are generally affected by link distance and weather conditions like environmental temperature and light, sun, fog, snow, smoke, haze and rain. In this paper we study the effects of weather conditions on the performance of FSO links, taking the climate of Algeria as an example, and since there is no known analysis on the effects of weather conditions in this country, this paper offers an attempt to analyze and identify the challenges related to the deployment of FSO links under Algeria's weather. We also present a Graphic User Interface "GUI" to provide an approximate availability estimate of an atmospheric optical link in term of probability of connection.