Free Space Optical System Performance for a Gaussian Beam Propagating Through Non-Kolmogorov Weak Turbulence

    Authors

    I. Toselli; L. C. Andrews; R. L. Phillips;V. Ferrero

    Comments

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    Abbreviated Journal Title

    IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag.

    Keywords

    Atmospheric turbulence; beam spreading; bit error rate (BER); fade; non; Kolmogorov spectrum; scintillation; signal to noise ratio (SNR); structure function; MUTUAL COHERENCE FUNCTION; PLANE-WAVE SOLUTION; RANDOM-MEDIA; MODAL-THEORY; GENERAL-THEORY; Engineering, Electrical & Electronic; Telecommunications

    Abstract

    Atmospheric turbulence has been described for many years by Kolmogorov's power spectral density model because of its simplicity. Unfortunately several experiments have been reported recently that show Kolmogorov theory is sometimes incomplete to describe atmospheric statistics properly, in particular in portions of the troposphere and stratosphere. It is known that free space laser system performance is limited by atmospheric turbulence. In this paper we use a non-Kolmogorov power spectrum which uses a generalized exponent instead of constant standard exponent value 11/3 and a generalized amplitude factor instead of constant value 0.033. Using this spectrum in weak turbulence, we carry out, for a Gaussian beam propagating along a horizontal path, analysis of long term beam spread, scintillation, probability of fade, mean signal to noise ratio and mean bit error rate as variation of the spectrum exponent. Our theoretical results show that for alpha values lower than alpha = 11/3, but not for alpha close to alpha = 3, there is a remarkable increase of scintillation and consequently a major penalty on the system performance. However when alpha assumes values close to alpha = 3 or for alpha values higher than alpha = 11/3 scintillation decreases leading to an improvement on the system performance.

    Journal Title

    Ieee Transactions on Antennas and Propagation

    Volume

    57

    Issue/Number

    6

    Publication Date

    1-1-2009

    Document Type

    Article

    Language

    English

    First Page

    1783

    Last Page

    1788

    WOS Identifier

    WOS:000266778200023

    ISSN

    0018-926X

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