Comparison of scintillation measurements from a 5 km communication link to standard statistical models

Abstract

As part of a free-space optical communications experiment over a 5km horizontal path, an extensive database of tilt-stabilized receiver data was collected for C_n² n conditions ranging from benign to very strong. This paper focuses on the scintillation measurements made during those tests. Ensemble probability distributions are compiled from these results, and are subsequently compared with standard channel models such as the log-normal and gammagamma distributions. Statistical representations of temporal behavior are also developed from this database. Accurate statistical models of atmospheric channel effects have proved to be invaluable in the development of high-performance free-space transceivers.