Bit Error Rate of a Gaussian Beam Propagating Through Biological Tissue

Abstract

The scintillation index and bit error rate (BER) of a Gaussian beam propagating in a weakly turbulent soft tissue are formulated and analysed numerically. The scintillation indices are plotted against half of the measured slope in the range of power-law scaling at different tissue parameters, such as the random variations in the refractive index of the tissue, outer scale of the tissue turbulence and the tissue length between the optical source and the detector. Moreover, BERs of Gaussian beams against the signal to noise ratio (SNR) are examined for different tissue parameters. Our graphical results show that the scintillation index and BER increase with larger outer scales, longer tissue lengths and larger random variations in the refractive index of the tissue. In comparison with the spherical wave propagation, it was found that Gaussian beam yields larger scintillation index and BER values.