Use of a partially coherent transmitter beam to improve the statistics of received power in a free-space optical communication system: Theory and experimental results

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2-1-2011

Abstract

Controlling the spatial coherence of the transmitted beam has been suggested as a means of improving the statistics of the received power in long-range free-space optical communications systems. We present an experiment demonstrating the concept of transmitting a partially spatial coherent beam through a turbulent path in a lab setting to overcome long-term dropouts in the received power. It is demonstrated both theoretically and experimentally that using a partially spatial coherent beam can decrease the scintillation index by ∼ 50 and the mean intensity in the simulation by ∼ 90 regardless of turbulence strength, when compared to the intensity of a fully coherent source in turbulence. © 2011 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE).

Publication Title

Optical Engineering

Share

COinS