On fading probability density functions of fast-tracked and untracked free-space optical communication channels

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

4-18-2011

Abstract

Free-space optical (FSO) communication systems suffer from average power loss and instantaneous power fading due to the atmospheric turbulence. The channel fading probability density function (pdf) is of critical importance for FSO communication system design and evaluation. The performance and reliability of FSO communication systems can be greatly enhanced if fast-tacking devices are employed at the transmitter in order to compensate laser beam wander at the receiver aperture. The fast-tracking method is especially effective when communication distance is long. This paper studies the fading probability density functions of both fast-tracked and untracked FSO communication channels. Large-scale wave-optics simulations are conducted for both tracked and untracked lasers. In the simulations, the Kolmogorov spectrum is adopted, and it is assumed that the outer scale is infinitely large and the inner scale is negligibly small. The fading pdfs of both fast-tracked and untracked FSO channels are obtained from the simulations. Results show that the fast-tracked channel fading can be accurately modeled as gamma-distributed if receiver aperture size is smaller than the coherence radius. An analytical method is given for calculating the untracked fading pdfs of both point-like and finite-size receiver apertures from the fast-tracked fading pdf. For point-like apertures, the analytical method gives pdfs close to the well-known gamma-gamma pdfs if off-axis effects are omitted in the formulation. When off-axis effects are taken into consideration, the untracked pdfs obtained using the analytical method fit the simulation pdfs better than gamma-gamma distributions for point-like apertures, and closely fit the simulation pdfs for finite-size apertures where gamma-gamma pdfs deviate from those of the simulations significantly. © 2011 Copyright Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE).

Publication Title

Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering

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