Evaluation of the scintillation loss for optical communication systems with direct detection

Nicolas Perlot

doi:10.1117/1.2436866

1 February 2007 Evaluation of the scintillation loss for optical communication systems with direct detection

Nicolas Perlot

Author Affiliations +

Optical Engineering, Vol. 46, Issue 2, 025003 (February 2007). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.2436866

Abstract

In optical communications through the atmosphere, the evaluation of a link feasibility often requires the quantification of the scintillation penalty in terms of power loss. To find how much additional optical power is needed to reach the bit-error-rate (BER) requirements, the optical-power fluctuations must be characterized as well as the response of the receiver to those fluctuations. In the present analysis, the direct-detected optical power is assumed to be either lognormal or gamma-gamma distributed. To account for the dynamics of the atmospheric channel, a distinction is made between short-term and long-term BERs. For a simple On-Off Keying (OOK) modulation, expressions of scintillation losses are given for different system requirements. Specifically, an upper bound is set to any of the three following quantities: the long-term BER, the probability of having a too-high short-term BER, or the mean time during which the short-term BER is too high. Results show that, without any fade mitigation, losses under moderate scintillation are considerable. Finally, a simple code-word approach shows how scintillation losses can be reduced by channel coding.

©(2007) Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)

Citation Download Citation

Nicolas Perlot "Evaluation of the scintillation loss for optical communication systems with direct detection," Optical Engineering 46(2), 025003 (1 February 2007). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.2436866

Published: 1 February 2007

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