Exploration and Modelling of Atmospheric Turbulences Effects for Downlink Scenario of Free Space Optics Communications.

Scintillation, beam wandering, and phase front distortion are the principal impacts of atmospheric turbulence on laser beam propagation. The aperture averaging concept might be used to minimize the effect for the first two, but the third, which is important for high-speed free-space communications, is significantly more challenging. More than ten years ago, the institute of communications and navigation (IKN) of the german aerospace centre (DLR) conducted optical downlink experiments with JAXA's OICETS/Kirari-Japan to study the optical LEO downlink channel and assess the viability of this transmission technology for upcoming applications. The present work will study and give a comparable insight into simulation and experimental results showing a significant relationship elevation dependency for parameters linked to index-of-refraction turbulence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]