Evaluation of performance of ground to satellite free space optical link under turbulence conditions for different intensity modulation schemes

Abstract

Free space optical communication is impaired by atmospheric effects such as weather conditions, attenuation, scattering and turbulence. We investigate the effect of using different intensity modulation schemes on combating atmospheric turbulence. The results show that the intensity modulated beam is more resistant to turbulence with the differential pulse position scheme showing the better performance in comparison to the pulse position scheme, whereas the on-off keying scheme performs the best among the three intensity modulation schemes.