Atmospheric turbulence-induced signal fades on optical heterodyne communication links

The three basic atmospheric propagation effects, absorption, scattering, and turbulence, are reviewed. A simulation approach is then developed to determine signal fade probability distributions on heterodyne-detected satellite links which operate through naturally occurring atmospheric turbulence. The calculations are performed on both angle-tracked and nonangle-tracked downlinks, and on uplinks, with and without adaptive optics. Turbulence-induced degradations in communication performance are determined using signal fade probability distributions, and it is shown that the average signal fade can be a poor measure of the performance degradation.