Atmospheric channel transfer function estimation from experimental free-space optical communications data

Colin N. Reinhardt; Dimitris Tsintikidis; Stephen M. Hammel; Yasuo Kuga; James A. Ritcey; Akira Ishimaru

doi:10.1117/1.OE.51.3.031205

27 March 2012 Atmospheric channel transfer function estimation from experimental free-space optical communications data

Colin N. Reinhardt, Dimitris Tsintikidis, Stephen M. Hammel, Yasuo Kuga, James A. Ritcey, Akira Ishimaru

Author Affiliations +

Optical Engineering, Vol. 51, Issue 3, 031205 (March 2012). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.OE.51.3.031205

Abstract

Using an 850-nanometer-wavelength free-space optical (FSO)communications system of our own design, we acquired field data for the transmitted and received signals in fog at Point Loma, CA for a range of optical depths within the multiple-scattering regime. Statistical estimators for the atmospheric channel transfer function and the related coherency function were computed directly from the experimental data. We interpret the resulting channel transfer function estimates in terms of the physics of the atmospheric propagation channel and fog aerosol particle distributions. We investigate the behavior of the estimators using both real field-test data and simulated propagation data. We compare the field-data channel transfer function estimates against the outputs from a computationally-intensive radiative-transfer theory model-based approach, which we also developed previously for the FSO multiple-scattering atmospheric channel. Our results show that the data-driven channel transfer function estimates are in close agreement with the radiative transfer modeling, and provide comparable receiver signal detection performance improvements while being significantly less time and computationally-intensive.

Citation Download Citation

Colin N. Reinhardt, Dimitris Tsintikidis, Stephen M. Hammel, Yasuo Kuga, James A. Ritcey, and Akira Ishimaru "Atmospheric channel transfer function estimation from experimental free-space optical communications data," Optical Engineering 51(3), 031205 (27 March 2012). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.OE.51.3.031205

Published: 27 March 2012

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