Airborne Laser Communication

Lasers offer tremendous advantages over RF communication systems in terms of bandwidth and security due to their ultra-high frequency and narrow spatial beamwidth. Unfortunately, atmospheric turbulence significantly increases the re-ceived power variation and bit error rate (BER) in free-space optical communication (FSOC) systems. Further, airborne optical communication systems require special considerations in size, complexity, power, and weight. If two or more laser beams are sufficiently separated so that their turbulence effects are uncorrelated (i.e. anisoplanatic), they can effectively “average out ” tur-bulence effects. This requisite separation distance is derived for multiple geometries, turbulence conditions, and optical properties. In most cases and geometries, the angles ordered from largest to smallest are: phase uncorrelated angle (equivalent to the tilt uncorrelated angle and phase anisoplanatic angle), tilt isoplanatic angle, phase isoplanatic angle, scintillation uncorrelated angle (or scintillation anisoplanatic angle), and scintillation isoplanatic angle (θψind> θTA> θ0> θχind> θχ0). Con