Microwave and optical technology letters

We present the development and characterization of a simulation module in the temporal domain for optical atmospheric links affected by optical turbulence with Gamma‐Gamma probability density function. We generate time series for different turbulence levels, from weak to strong, to simulate the effect produced by the atmospheric optical channel over an optical carrier with binary‐modulated intensity. We added at the photoreceiver stage a time‐domain amplitude noise from a real‐world component. We carried out performance evaluation of the simulated links through eye pattern diagrams making a qualitative comparison of the waveforms obtained in some of our simulations with waveforms acquired in our long‐distance atmospheric optical links. Our module allows carrying out in a simple way the design and the characterization in the time domain by simulation models of optical links for atmospheric optical communications. Including parameters of physical components, we can obtain results closer to those obtained in the real world.Microwave and optical technology lettershttps://doi.org/10.1002/mop.3246