4 � 10 Gb/s terrestrial optical free space transmission over 12 km using an EDFA preamplifier with 100 GHz channel spacing

We demonstrate a transmission of 4 x 10 Gb/s WDM channels over 1.2 km of free space in 1.55-microm band. The transmitted beam is coupled into a single-mode fiber through a fiber-pigtailed collimator, which enables the use of standard 100-GHz channel spacing and an optical preamplifier at the receiver. All the received channels have Q values higher than 6.