Optical Propagation in Unguided Media

Abstract

This chapter provides fundamentals of light propagation in unguided media and particularly discusses turbulence of transmission environment. The degradation effects of turbulence in the received signal of an OWC system are presented. The turbulence power spectra used in the formulation of various entities are given in various links operating in different environments such as atmosphere, space and underwater. The Rytov method and the extended Huygens-Fresnel principle are employed in the evaluation of the average intensity and the scintillation index. Effects of different optical beam profiles in the average received intensity and the scintillation index are further examined. Finally, some mitigation methods, such as the transmitter and the receiver aperture averaging, to reduce the turbulence degradation are given.