Effects of aerosols and atmospheric boundary layer dynamics on refractive index fluctuations implications for Free Space Optical communication

Abstract

Laser communication through atmospheric channels is an emerging wireless technology, newlinecommonly known as Free-Space Optical (FSO) communication. It facilitates unprecedented newlinechannel capacity and very large bandwidth, favouring huge-volume data transfer across newlinespatially separated locations. The performance of FSO links depend largely on the atmospheric channel state. There are two main processes leading to signal degradation in FSO links: attenuation due to scattering and absorption, and intensity fluctuations due to scintillation and beam wander (represented using the refractive index structure parameter Cn2 ). While the newlineattenuation effects can be quantified and compensated, it is difficult to quantify Cn2 , owing to the inherent randomness of atmospheric turbulence. newline