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A New Triangulation-Like Technique for the Evaluation of the Refractive

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JOURNAL OF LIGHTWAVE TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 29, NO. 24, DECEMBER 15, 2011
A New Triangulation-Like Technique for the
Evaluation of the Refractive Index Structure Constant
in Free-Space Optical Links
Vinicius N. H. Silva, Andrés P. L. Barbero, and Ricardo M. Ribeiro, Member, IEEE, OSA
Abstract—A light beam propagating through the atmosphere
has its amplitude, phase, and propagation direction changed along
the optical path due to atmospheric turbulence. This effect is
caused by the randomness of the air refractive index and depends
on the local temperature, pressure, and humidity. The physical
parameter that quanties the turbulence strength is well known in
the literature as the refractive index structure constant . In
this paper, a simple and low-cost technique based on a triangula-
tion-like method to measure the is presented for the rst time
to the best knowledge of the authors. Through a novel device com-
prised of three photodetectors in a triangle-shaped array placed
on the receiver plane, it is possible, after power measurements
and applying a developed mathematical model, to obtain precisely
the position of the beam spot. Therefore, calculates the and
evaluates the atmospheric turbulence strength. Furthermore, the
technique is useful to check the suitability of a free-space optical
(FSO) link in a specic geographic region by monitoring the
local turbulence. Also, the device will be useful to improve the
deployment and maintenance of FSO systems.
Index Terms—Atmospheric turbulence, beam wander,
free-space optics (FSO), optical communications, refractive
index structure constant (RISC).
I. INTRODUCTION
F REE-SPACE optics (FSO) is a point-to-point wireless
broadband communication technology that uses an optical
wave carrier to transmit data through the Earth’s atmosphere
[1], including intersatellite communications [2]. It consists
of at least two transceivers distant few kilometers from each
other in line of sight. In outdoor links, it is very difcult to
intercept the free-space optical beams and allow unauthorized
demodulation. Therefore, FSO is recognized as a highly secure
communication technology. Besides, FSO features several
Manuscript received October 15, 2010; revised May 03, 2011, July 21, 2011;
accepted August 21, 2011. Date of publication September 06, 2011; date of
current version December 07, 2011. This work was supported in part by the
Brazilian Ministry of Defense under Pró-Defesa Grant, by CNPq (Brazilian
Council of Research), and in part by CAPES under Pró-Defesa Grant.
V. N. H. Silva was with the Laboratório de Comunicações Ópticas, Departa-
mento de Engenharia de Telecomunicações, Universidade Federal Fluminense,
Niterói 24.210-240, Brasil. He is now with the Telecom-Bretagne, Optics De-
partment, Brest, 29200 Bretagne, France (e-mail: vinicius.nunes@telecom-bre-
tagne.eu).
A. P. L. Barbero and R. M. Ribeiro are with the Laboratório de Comuni-
cações Ópticas, Departamento de Engenharia de Telecomunicações, Universi-
dade Federal Fluminense, Niterói 24.210-240, Brasil (e-mail: pablo@telecom.
uff.br; rmr@telecom.uff.br).
Color versions of one or more of the gures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identier 10.1109/JLT.2011.2167128
0733-8724/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE
3603
advantages as portability, immunity against electromagnetic
interference, and it is license-free for commercial purposes [1].
However, FSO is subjected to unavoidable atmospheric ef-
fects that attenuates, deects, and dephases the optical beams.
In this sense, there are several drawbacks such as beam obstruc-
tion, scattering, light absorption, atmospheric turbulence, pollu-
tion, and weather conditions (rain, snow, and fog) that ought to
be mitigated.
Atmospheric turbulence is caused by the variation in the air
refractive index mainly due to changes in the local tempera-
ture, pressure, and humidity. The surface of the Earth warms
the surrounding air, increasing the size of the air cells and de-
creasing its density. Such cells mix with cooler air above them
leading to a heterogeneous and turbulent medium that can be
characterized by the wavelength independent refractive index
structure constant (RISC) [4]–[9]. Because of the changes
in the refractive index, the interaction of the laser beam with
the turbulent medium leads to a random degradation of some
lightwave characteristics such as amplitude, power distribution,
propagation direction (deection), and phase. Such phenomena
can generate three effects on the receiver aperture: scintillation,
beam wander, and beam spread [1]. Intensity scintillation and
beam wander are the two most problematic effects of an FSO
link and can be observed even for a high degree of atmosphere
visibility [11].
The theoretical approach to studies of atmospheric turbulence
investigations began in the 1960s and 1970s, but has shown
some disagreement with the available experimental data [12].
Nevertheless, it is highly desirable that the FSO communication
link remains operational (with acceptable bit error ratio) what-
ever the atmospheric turbulence strength.
During the past decades, most of the investigations into FSO
have been directed along a vertical propagation path for astro-
nomical observation and imaging. For such purposes, adaptive
optics has been developed. However, in recent years, research
into horizontal [12] and slanted paths [13] propagation has in-
creased to improve FSO communication systems.
The available literature has reported a few techniques and
equipments that have been developed to measure the atmo-
spheric turbulence such as ber-optic interferometry [14],
scintillometers [6]–[8], Shack–Hartman wave front sensors
[12], charged-coupled device (CCD) cameras [11], [15], and
a technique based on the correlation between two narrow,
collimated, and parallel laser beams [11], [16], a PSD, and
quadrant detector [17]–[19].
3604
In this paper, we describe a novel optical triangulation-like
technique with the following characteristics: simple, large dy-
namic range to measure the RISC, potential to work with weak
or strong turbulences, and low cost. The device was conceived
specically for tracking the beam on the receiver plane. Thus,
the technique measures the parameter and, therefore, the
horizontal atmospheric turbulence. The presented triangulation-
like technique for real-time beam tracking is a novel in itself and
the device built to implement it as well. Furthermore, the tech-
nique remains novel when applied to tracking the beam, mea-
suring the wander and the spread to calculate the RISC. This
paper is organized in the following way. Section II describes the
beam-wander effect, Section III outlines a mathematical proce-
dure to process the raw data measurements, Section IV presents
the experimental setup or the device itself, Section V presents
and discusses the measurements of the results achieved, and
Section VI sketches some conclusions and future suggestions.
II. BEAM-WANDER EFFECT
When a laser beam propagates through the vacuum (homo-
geneous medium), it experiences only the divergence phenom-
enon due to optical diffraction and no turbulence effects are ob-
served. However, when a laser beam propagates through a tur-
bulent atmosphere, besides diffraction and beam wander, also
occurs beam-spread and scintillation [20], [21]. Notice that the
scintillation effects will be neglected in this discussion, but the
beam-spread is explicitly included in the model that will be pre-
sented in Section III. The beam wander is a random nature ef-
fect because of the complex thermo-uid dynamic of the atmos-
phere. As long as the beam propagates through large-scale atmo-
spheric inhomogeneities, it randomly deects, changing its di-
rection. In the theory of laser-beam propagation through random
media, these atmospheric inhomogeneities are represented as
cells with diameter . Then, the qualitative effect of the beam
wander is to randomly displace the center of the optical beam
(maximum intensity) on the receiver plane. The latter is usu-
ally known in FSO technology as the “beam-wander effect.”
The beam-spot “dances” on the nite aperture of the receiver
plane, thus fading the effective signal received by the photo-
diode. The aforementioned random displacement typically oc-
curs when the beam waist is much less than the cells diameter
, i.e., . procedure was proposed to calculate the variance
Let us consider the 2-D Cartesian–polar coordinate system
( or ) in the receiver plane and the stochastic polar vari-
able which is the radial displacement of the beam center. The
Cartesian coordinates of the center of the light spot are
also stochastic and are linked to the by the coordinate trans-
formation as follows:
(1)
The beam wander can be statistically characterized by
the variance of the on the receiver plane (see Fig. 1 and
Section III).
The variance has been stated as an empirical relation (2),
which is suitable for weak and intermediary turbulence strength
[22]. It is dependent on parameters like the width (beam waist)
JOURNAL OF LIGHTWAVE TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 29, NO. 24, DECEMBER 15, 2011
Fig. 1. Transversal picture of the beam spot imaged on the receiver plane taken
by a CCD camera. The beam is centered at . The three photodetectors
, their coordinates , collected powers , and their distances .
Fig. 2. Schematic drawing of the short optical link built in the laboratory where
the light source is fully illuminating the receiver plane. A fourth photodetector
placed at the center of the receiver plane is observed. Its role is to measure
and to make easy the alignment before starting the tracking experiments.
of the Gaussian-shaped beam , the length of the communica-
tion link , and the RISC , given by
(2)
III. PROPOSED TECHNIQUE
The technique proposed in this paper and also the new device
implemented were both based on an optical triangulation-like
technique [23]–[26]. As will be explained in the next section,
this simple device was designed, built, and tested in the labora-
tory environment.
The aim of the proposed technique (see Section IV) is the
direct measurement of the and tracking the beam wander. In
order to track the beam wander, a simple and fast mathematical
. In this
way, the RISC is calculated by (2), after assuming that is
a previously known parameter. As will be shown, the light-spot
beam waist , will be calculated. Fig. 1 shows the Cartesian
reference system – at the receiver plane with the origin (0,
0). Also, Fig. 1 illustrates the general position of the optical spot
centered at .
In order to track the Gaussian spot, a simple device is inserted
on the receiver plane, as shown in Fig. 2. This device is com-
prised of three photodetectors assigned as , where ,
each one placed at coordinates . Fig. 1 shows a picture
of the Gaussian spot imaged on the receiver plane by using a
CCD camera.
In Fig. 1, the Cartesian reference system – with origin in
(0, 0), the center of the Gaussian light spot , the position
of the three photodetectors , and the radial distance
SILVA et al.: EVALUATION OF THE REFRACTIVE INDEX STRUCTURE 3605

between the photodetectors and the spot 1) First Case—Distance between photodetectors : Even
center are all shown. Equation (3) describes the optical power if the beam spot moves, the power detected by the pho-
transversal distribution of the Gaussian spot: todetectors is buried in the noise; thus the equations system
(5) will converge to . The only possibility
(3) to detect the beam position is by having at least
one of the photodetector’s power with signal-to-noise ratio
where and are the radial dis- (0 dB), but the error becomes too large. In prin-
tance from the measurement point to the center of the Gaussian ciple, to limit the error up to 1%, it is necessary at least one
spot, the Gaussian beam waist, and the power at the spot center, of the photodetectors with (20 dB). However,
respectively. the model uses an interactive calculation scheme, where
In order to obtain a spatial sampling of the Gaussian spot, an in practice three equations have to be simultaneously sat-
amount of incident optical power is collected and measured ised; consequently, the SNR can be smaller (
through the aperture of each photodetector located at the dB).
position . By setting and , (3) 2) Second Case—Distance between photodetectors :
can be inverted as Even if the beam spot moves, the power detected will
not change because , where is the power
(4) difference between the photodetectors. Therefore, the
equations system (5) again converge to .
where is the normalized optical power. Equation As it can be seen in the cases discussed earlier, the distance
(4) can be written for each of the photodetectors , thus giving between photodetectors, beam waist , and the SNR are very
the equation system [25], [26] important parameters on the performance of this new technique.
The resolution limit is the minimum beam displacement
(5) that can be detected by the present device. Then, it is clear that
the is strongly dependent on the aforementioned three pa-
rameters ( , and SNR).
The photodetector’s coordinates are known and the The is calculated when the photodetectors are placed at
optical powers are measured. Therefore, (5) presents just the maxima of the derivative of the Gaussian spot, i.e., the crit-
three unknown quantities, i.e., , and to be simultane- ical radius , which is obtained by nding the root of the
ously numerically solved. The mathematical algorithm outlined second derivative of (3), and is given by
here ensures that the simple measurement of optical power in
three different positions on the receiver plane is enough to give (6)
the light-spot center and the beam waist , even in
real time, since (5) can be solved by a fast microprocessor [25], The determines the most sensitive radial position of
[26]. However, at the present stage, the technique still requires the beam spot. This means that a small displacement causes the
the previous measurement of the optical power . maximum power variation on the photodetector .
It should be observed that it is not possible to calculate the After differentiating (3), it is achieved an expression that
RISC and track the beam at the same time using a single pho- gives the resolution as given by
todetector. Our technique claims to be a beam tracker and also
an “RISC meter.” As explained earlier, to know the exact posi- (7)
tion of the beam, it is necessary to calculate the coordinates of
the beam center . Also, the “interference” of the beam- However, when the beam moves, the power on one of the
spread effect should be avoided in the measurements. Therefore, photodetectors increases, while the power on the other photode-
it is necessary to calculate and the beam position at tectors decreases by the same value. In order to keep the power
the same time. In this scenario, there are three variables to be difference between the detectors equal to , it is necessary
calculated and consequentially three photodetectors. to have a power variation of on each photodetector.
Weak or strong atmospheric turbulence strength causes a By substituting (6) into (7) and using , the
small or a large radial variance, respectively. The presented resolution limit for different beam waist can be calculated
mathematical model will continue to track the beam since it from
remains Gaussian shaped, which is a reasonable assumption
for laser beams.
When the beam waist is too large, the received power (8)
by the three photodiodes may be similar even when the beam
center has moved or the beam waist has changed. As a result,
From simple geometrical calculation, where , and
this scheme has a resolution limit that is also related to the dis-
using the condition described by (6), the beam waist can be re-
tance between the photodiodes. In the absence of noise, the pho-
lated to the distance between photodetectors by
todetectors can be theoretically placed at any distance from each
other. However, in the presence of noise with power , two
extremes cases are possible: (9)
3606 JOURNAL OF LIGHTWAVE TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 29, NO. 24, DECEMBER 15, 2011

Finally, substituting (9) into (8), the resolution limit as TABLE I

function of the distance is given by CARTESIAN COORDINATES OF THE PHOTODETECTORS

(10)

to relate the dependence of the resolution limit and the dynamic

IV. EXPERIMENTAL SETUP range of the device as a function of eld parameters such as the
beam waist , the distance between detectors , and the SNR.
A HiBi ber pigtailed laser diode (LD) manufactured by Finally, in the third section, it is shown that by the extrapolation
Pirelli, model 790326401, emitting 100 mW (at operational of the results from the previous section, the RISC can be cal-
current) at 980 nm was used as the light source. The LD is culated based on the parameters obtained by the device in real
driven by a current source Newport 5030 and is cooled by environment.
a temperature controller ILX Light Wave LDT-5525. The
power distribution radiating from the HiBi ber was ellipti- A. Optical Beam Tracking
cally shaped. In order to transform the elliptical spot into a
The mathematical model, shown in Section III, uses an itera-
circular-shaped one, the HiBi ber was spliced with a standard
tive routine based on a modied Powell hybrid algorithm for the
single-mode optical ber G.652 with a cutoff wavelength of
solution of a nonlinear system of coupled equations (5). Then,
1300 nm. A homemade modal lter was used to suppress
a set of estimated values for the center of the Gaussian spot
the high order and the cladding modes propagating along the
and the beam waist is necessary.
G.652 optical ber. Such procedure is necessary to ensure that
Additionally, the voltage and the coordinates of
a circular Gaussian beam is generated on the receiver plane.
each of the three photodetectors must be known and are
The three photodetectors are TIL81 phototransistors. The
used as a constant parameter during the solution of (5). Finally,
photodetectors are biased by a driver circuit which electrical
the three electrical output signals from the photodetectors
outputs were connected to an analog-to-digital converter from
feed the running software, giving as results the coordinates
National Instruments (NI USB-6219) that interfaces with a
of the Gaussian spot center.
personal computer.
For convenience, the measurement of (or ) was done
Fig. 2 shows schematically the infrared light emitted from the
using a fourth auxiliary phototransistor placed at the center of
LD propagating through the free-space along 21 cm distance.
the “photodetectors triangle,” as shown in Fig. 2. The coordi-
The light beam that hits on the receiver plane has a Gaussian
nates of the photodetectors are shown in Table I.
distribution with a beam waist larger than . Therefore, il-
Translation stages were coupled to the receiver plane al-
lumination of the three photodetectors is ensured (see Fig. 2).
lowing accurate displacement of the photodetectors along the
A voltage is generated from each of the photodetectors that
horizontal and vertical axes to simulate the beam wander. The
is linearly dependent on the respective collected optical powers
resolution of the translation stages is 0.1 mm, enough for our
. The three analog signals are automatically digitized and sent
purpose.
to the personal computer. The computer receives the measure-
In order to demonstrate the technique, an experiment was
ment data and solves (5). Then, the output is the relative po-
done and the result is shown in Fig. 3. Fig. 3 illustrates the dis-
sition of the Gaussian spot and the beam waist at the
placements of the receiver plane by using the translation stages.
receiver plane. Notice that , with being the
In our experiment, the origin of the Cartesian system (0, 0) was
generated voltage for the power at the center of the Gaussian
chosen as a reference point used to set up the photodetectors
spot . For this reason, it is used the generated voltage in-
positions, as is shown in Fig. 1. The experiment started at the
stead of the collected power in the solution of (5).
“reference point” that coincides with the center of the Gaussian
In free-space transmission systems (indoor or outdoor), back-
spot. The dotted lines map the displacement of the reference
ground light should be reduced. Nevertheless, it is impossible to
point measured in the Vernier scale of the translation stages.
eliminate it. Furthermore, it must be noticed that the in (8)
These measurements were assumed to be “exact” and a 10 mm
takes into account both the electrical and optical (background
square was traced. It should be noticed that the optical beam
light) noise contributions on the detection process. In order to
did not move and only the receiver plane was displaced, i.e., in
minimize the background light, thus improving the SNR, an en-
a quasi-static regime.
closure was built around the experimental setup. For practical
The measurement of the , and the estimation (guess value)
applications, a bandpass lter immediately placed before the
of the beam waist , must be done before the beginning of the
photodetectors and centered in the laser wavelength will also
calculation, i.e., the solution of (5). We measured
reduce the background light and the noise.
mV and estimated mm after a sweep on the Gaussian
spot. The value of was used as a guess value for the iterative
V. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS solution of the equations system (5). In Fig. 3, the solid line
The results and discussions are presented in three sections. maps the evolution of the reference point coordinates. After the
In the rst section, tracking experiments, quasi-static regime, measurements of the generated voltages , the relative position
and laboratory environment are shown to demonstrate the tech- of the center of the Gaussian spot is calculated by means
nique. In the second section, the bench results are extrapolated of the solution given in (5).
SILVA et al.: EVALUATION OF THE REFRACTIVE INDEX STRUCTURE 3607

solid lines as can be seen in Fig. 3. Equation (8) also shows that
is linearly dependent on the electrical noise . Prac-
tical FSO links where the beam-wander effects should be moni-
tored with the present technique requires low-noise photodetec-
tors and ampliers to maintain high accuracy.

B. Resolution Limit and Dynamic Range

In this section, the resolution limit and the dynamic range
dB of the device are evaluated. dB is dened as

dB (11)

Fig. 3. Experimental results of the tracking in a quasi-static regime. The mea-

surements start at (0, 0) coordinates, where the Gaussian spot was superimposed
requires the calculation of the maximum measurable radial
and centered on the receiver plane. The receiver plane was displaced by two or- beam displacement . In this way, a numerical simulation
thogonal translation stages in a square shaped with sides of 10 mm. The dotted of the beam wander and its tracking in the presence of noise
line is the “exact” measurements and the solid line is the real-time measure-
ments done by the present technique.
were carried out for a wide range of beam waist . In the
discussion, the distance mm between photodetec-
tors was kept constant. The measured electrical values for
mV and mV were used in this section,
The experimental results (solid lines) shown in Fig. 3 are
i.e., dB.
in good agreement with the “exact” results (dotted lines). The
From Section III, First Case, it is clear that under the condi-
calculated beam waist over the whole experiment was
tion , i.e., the distance between photodetectors greater
mm and it is in good agreement with the initial es-
timated value. However, a small tracking deviation between the than the beam waist, and under noisy conditions, the equations
two lines is clearly observed. Such an error is explained in the system (5) converge to the origin of the Cartesian system. Ac-
following way: when the receiver plane displacement increases, cording to the Second Case, when , the solution also
one or more photodetectors may collect weak optical power be- converge to the origin.
cause the intensities decrease in a Gaussian dependence, as is In order to estimate the and dB , the beam-waist
described in (3). Therefore, the SNR decreases due to the in- is varied from the minimum (see First Case in Section III) to
trinsic electrical noise generated by the photodetectors. The de- the maximum (see Second Case in Section III) detectable size.
viation error is in agreement with the resolution limit that is The minimum detectable beam waist size depends on the SNR
better explained in Section V-B. and . Then, using in (3) ( mm) (the distance from the
Besides the experimental result shown in Fig. 3, many other beam center to the photodetectors), mV
similar tests at quasi-static regime were done and matched with and mV, it is obtained
the theoretical model. Although this paper aims to present the
proof-of-principle of the proposed technique, new experimental mm
results in a dynamic regime have been recently achieved. In-
deed, the new results to be published [27] are again in accor- Fig. 4(a) shows the plots of the simulations of the beam dis-
dance with the theoretical model. placement from to in dashed line (black)
A long-term measurement of the optical power detected by and the results of calculations in solid lines (red). Fig. 4(b)
one of the photodetectors was continuously performed during shows the plot of absolute error dened as
6 h. The optical power generated by the LD was kept stable
and the receiver plane was left at rest. Then, it was measured (12)
a peak-to-peak electrical noise with amplitude of 11 mV. The
that corresponds to the absolute distance between the beam
measured electrical noise was the superposition of the detected
in the presence and absence of noise. In
background light in the experiment, electromagnetic induction,
and typical noises from the source (LD) and from the optical Fig. 4(a), the dashed line (black) is the beam path tracked by
detection process. As is shown from (8) and (10), the growth noiseless (ideal) photodetectors and the solid line (red) is the
of the backlight power level directly impacts on the beam path tracked by the noisy (real) photodetectors. As it
resolution limit by means of the linear dependence was discussed in the First Case in Section III, only close to
as provided by our technique. the two plot lines in Fig. 4(a) almost matches
In order to estimate the tracking error shown in Fig. 3 due to each other. Notice that the in Fig. 4(b) is high along all the
the electrical noise mV, let us consider (8). It should displacement and close to the origin of the Cartesian
be pointed out that according to Table I, the photodetectors were system.
placed close to the critical radius as written by (6). Then, Moreover, it is dened the maximum measurable radial beam
using mV, mV, and mm in (8), displacement as the one that yields a relative error :
it gives mm. Such estimation is in excellent agree-
ment with the maximum deviation between the dotted and the
3608 JOURNAL OF LIGHTWAVE TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 29, NO. 24, DECEMBER 15, 2011

Fig. 4. (a) Simulation (dashed lines—black) and calculation (solid lines—red)

of the beam center and (b) absolute error for mm (or
).

Fig. 6. Simulations of the normalized beam position versus the

normalized beam waist . The “experimental setup conditions” is assigned
in the plot.

Fig. 5. (a) Results of numerical simulations of the noise effect when the device
is displaced. The solid straight-line links to is the path
tracked by noiseless photodetectors. The dotted line is the path tracked by noisy
photo-detectors. (b) Plot of the absolute error in the measurements of the
beam center. It was generated by the subtraction of the noiseless signal [solid
line of Fig. 5(a)] from the noisy signal [dotted line of Fig. 5(b)]. In the mm
to mm range an almost noise-free measurement is achieved.

Fig. 7. Simulations of the resolution limit versus the beam waist .

TABLE II
DEPENDENCE OF WITH THE BEAM WAIST

In this paper, it has been chosen % as the condition to yield Fig. 8. Simulations of the resolution limit versus the distance between
the value. Then, according to the simulation in Fig. 4(b), the photodetectors.
we obtain or .
In particular, the same simulation with the experimental con-
ditions described in Section V-A, mm , From Fig. 6, once the beam waist is known,
was done and the results are shown in Fig. 5. maximizes the measurable radial displacement to
From Fig. 5(b), it can be observed in the mm within a relative error smaller than 1%. Fig. 6 also shows that
mm range that the absolute error is mm. Then, the experimental results performed in Section A were not ob-
mm, and yields the condition tained under optimized conditions.
%. The resolution limit for the optimal conditions, pointed
Aiming to analyze and understand the dependence of out by (6) can be calculated using (8) or (10). Then, Fig. 7 shows
with the beam waist , further similar simulations were done, the for different ( mm mm),
as performed earlier (using the same values for , mV, and mV.
and ), for different values of (10, 20, 25, 40, 80, 100, and On the other hand, Fig. 8 shows the for different
150 mm). Table II summarizes the simulations results. ( mm mm), by using (10), mV, and
Fig. 6 shows the plot of the normalized maximum radial mV.
beam displacement versus the normalized beam The evaluation of dB is performed from (11) considering
waist . the results presented in Figs. 6 and 7, and for %. From
SILVA et al.: EVALUATION OF THE REFRACTIVE INDEX STRUCTURE
Fig. 6, it is concluded that the maximum measurable radial dis-
placement is , and from Fig. 7 it is observed a
linear dependence that gives the ratio. Then
dB
Therefore, according to all equations and simulations shown
in the present section, it is clear that dB is strongly depen-
dent on the SNR.
C. RISC Estimation
In this section, it is shown that with the values of and
, obtained in the previous section, it is possible the calcu-
lation of the RISC for real turbulent conditions (from the
m to m range), as reported in the literature. This
qualies the proposed technique and its possible future use in
real outdoor FSO link.
Let us assume a light beam traversing a hypothetical turbu-
lent cell in the atmosphere and hitting onto the receiver plane.
Therefore, the beam-wander effect is likely to occur. As just
reported in the literature [1], a harmonic behavior of the beam
wander with typical 1 kHz frequency is a realistic assumption.
From our experimental results and theoretical simulation, and
in the condition of the experimental setup, the device presented
here is able to track the spot beam up to 10 mm of radial am-
plitude without signicant error. Equation (13), written below,
mathematically describes the temporal dependence of the radial
position of the center of the Gaussian light beam to the center
of the reference system:
(13)
From (13), the maximum measurable root-mean-square
(RMS) value for the radial displacement of the beam center
is calculated straightforwardly, independently of the wander
frequency and it is given by mm. Recalling
(2) and using , the maximum measurable
value of the is easily estimated by our device if the link
distance and beam waist are also known, even for
extrapolated up to 2000 m.
Let us assume that the SNR achieved for outdoor link is the
same for indoor link, i.e., 18.5 dB. Besides, it is also considered
mm for real FSO link. Thus, the minimum measur-
able RISC can be estimated from the resolution limit or the
smaller measurable radial beam displacement . must set
From Fig. 7, the resolution limit is mm for
mm. Under the conditions of (13), the RMS of the radial
displacement is given by mm and the radial
variance is 1.28 mm . Then, using (2), the minimum RISC is
estimated to be m .
The maximum RISC can be estimated from the maximum
measurable radial beam displacement. Assuming the results
shown in the Section V-B, mm and
taking into account (13), the RMS of the radial displacement is
given by mm and the variance
3609
mm . Using again (2), the maximum RISC is estimated to be
m .
Although (2) used for the RISC calculation is strictly valid
only for weak and intermediary turbulences, the extrapolated
results have shown acceptable order of magnitude.
The values of can vary over time even for a specic link
due to the complex dynamic of the weather. Measurements of
m or less for the weak turbulence regime and
m or more for the strong turbulence regime
[6], [7], [19] have been obtained using various techniques. For
instance, the measured by Jimenez and colleagues [6], [7]
using a scintillometer model LOA-004 manufactured by Optical
Scientic Inc. The latter consists of a transmitter and receiver
modules. The transmitter uses an LD and the receiver uses two
single pixel detectors each of one measuring the log amplitude
of the optical intensity (scintillation).
In our physical simulation (reduced scale model) with
mm, the maximum detectable amplitude (with an error less
than 1%) of the beam wander is 10 mm. Using (13) to simulate
the turbulence, it is achieved mm, or 50%
of . In other words, the conditions of the experiments have
shown that should be 1 of to keep the measure-
ment error around 1%. We believe such ratio can be extrap-
olated for real optical links with a few kilometers length. There-
fore, depending on the , the size of the receiver screen must be
increased to match with . Nevertheless, the electronics can be
improved with less noisy circuits, sophisticated signal proces-
sors, and the use of photo-Darlingtons instead of phototransis-
tors. In this case, it is believed that is possible to obtain a better
performance device.
VI. CONCLUSION
Understanding optical beam propagation through atmo-
spheric turbulence is a mandatory step toward the efcient
implementation of an FSO communication system.
The developed device is based on an optical triangulation-like
technique and track in real-time the beam-wander and beam-
spread effects due to atmospheric turbulence in the receiver
plane. By measuring the variance of the beam wander, the de-
vice provides the from m to m , that
was obtained after extrapolating the experimental result done in
an indoor (short link) to an estimated outdoor FSO link.
It was shown, by experimental results and simulation, that the
device will be useful in real conditions as far as the distance
between photodetectors is properly adjusted allowing the “RISC
meter” to operate in an optimized performance. In this way, we
, where is the Gaussian spot beam waist,
thus obtaining the maximum dynamic range for the measure-
ment of radial variance . Under the experimental condi-
tions of SNR, it was observed that and the resolu-
tion limit . Thus, the dynamic range dB
dB was calculated and is in excellent agreement with the mea-
sured SNR. It must be noticed the strong dependence of all re-
sults here presented with the SNR.
However, all the experiments were carried out under
the controlled conditions of a laboratory environment. The
beam-wander effect was physically simulated by displacing
3610
the receiver screen in a quasi-static regime instead of the beam
spot itself.
In the experiments, TIL81 model phototransistors of
each were used, increasing the cost by a negligible
amount. Also, multichannel signal processors are available at
accessible cost. Moreover, it is important to notice that the
beam wander is a slow (kHz) effect and the use of expensive
RF electronics and processing are not required.
Therefore, the main aim of this research was to establish the
proof-of-principle of the technique.
FSO communication systems are expected to work properly
in weak, intermediate, and strong turbulence conditions. Satu-
rated ampliers have been used to reduce the scintillation effects
of FSO links [28]. Therefore, the device presented here would
potentially be built and integrated into an FSO system to track
the optical beam spot and/or measure the local turbulence, de-
spite its strength. One of the major problems in FSO communi-
cations is to keep the beam aligned on the receiver. Therefore,
the proposed technique can be part of the real-time realignment
FSO system due to its operational simplicity, easy construction
and low cost, thus increasing the FSO link availability.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank all people of the Laboratory
where this work was done.
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Author biographies not included at author request due to space constraints.