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We report on the performance characterization and issues associated with using Fibre Channel (FC) over a highly turbulent free-space optical (FSO) link. Fibre Channel is a storage area network standard that provides high throughput with low overhead. Extending FC to FSO links would simplify data transfer from existing high-bandwidth sensors such as synthetic aperture radars and hyperspectral imagers. We measured the behavior of FC protocol at 1 Gbps in the presence of synthetic link dropouts that are typical of turbulent FSO links. Results show that an average bit error rate of less than 2 x 10{sup -8} is mandatory for adequate throughput. More importantly, 10 ns dropouts at a 2 Hz rate were sufficient to cause long (25 s) timeouts in the data transfer. Although no data was lost, this behavior is likely to be objectionable for most applications. Prospects for improvements in hardware and software will be discussed.

We describe modeling and simulation of long-range terrestrial laser communications links between static and mobile platforms. Atmospheric turbulence modeling, along with pointing, tracking and acquisition models are combined to provide an overall capability to estimate communications link performance.

We report on the performance characterization and issues associated with using Gigabit Ethernet (GigE) over a highly turbulent 1.3 km air-optic lasercom links. Commercial GigE hardware is a cost-effective and scalable physical layer standard that can be applied to air-optic communications. We demonstrate a simple GigE hardware interface to a single-mode fiber-coupled, 1550 nm, WDM air-optic transceiver. TCP/IP serves as a robust and universal foundation protocol that has some tolerance of data loss due to atmospheric fading. Challenges include establishing and maintaining a connection with acceptable throughput under poor propagation conditions. The most useful link performance diagnostic is shown to be scintillation index, where a value of 0.2 is the maximum permissible for adequate GigE throughput. Maximum GigE throughput observed was 49.7% of that obtained with a fiber jumper when scintillation index is 0.1. Shortcomings in conventional measurements such as bit error rate are apparent. Prospects for forward error correction and other link enhancements will be discussed.

We describe a first generation mid-infrared transmitter with pulse to pulse frequency agility and both wide and narrow band capability. This transmitter was used to make multicomponent Differential Absorption LIDAR (DIAL) measurements in the field.