FREE SPACE OPTICAL COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS

Free space optical (FSO) communication has emerged as a viable technology for broadband wireless applications. FSO technology offers the potential of high bandwidth capacity over unlicensed optical wavelengths. On long-range FSO links, atmospheric turbulence causes intensity fluctuations, which degrades links performance. The performance of an optical link can be improved by the use of a time delayed diversity technique, which takes advantage of the fact that the atmospheric path from transmitter to receiver is statistically independent for time intervals beyond the coherence time of the intensity fluctuations. Communications performance is improved because the joint probability of error is less than the probability of error from individual channels. Theoretical analysis and experimental investigation were conducted to assess and characterize the performance of a time delayed diversity FSO system. Two experiments were conducted: inside our laboratory under simulated convective turbulence and inter-building in clear atmospheric turbulence. In both cases, time delayed diversity system is shown to offer a notable performance improvemen