Performance analysis of a laser satellite-communication system with a three-layer altitude spectrum over weak-to-strong turbulence

In this article, the downlink bit-error-rate (BER) performance of scintillation models for a laser satellite communication system influenced by weak-to-strong turbulence on a slant path is investigated, which take optical wavelength, zenith angle, terrestrial turbulence strength and modulation schemes into account. To describe the properties of atmospheric turbulence which vary with the altitude between a satellite station and a ground station, a three-layer altitude spectrum is used. By adopting the extended Rytov theory valid in weak-to-strong turbulence, scintillation models of an unbounded plane wave for downlink path and spherical wave for uplink path are derived, respectively. The optical fading channel influenced by weak-to-strong turbulence is modeled by Gamma–Gamma distribution. The numeric results show that when the system is under strong terrestrial turbulence conditions or at large zenith angles, disparities in BER performance among different kinds of level of pulse position modulation (PPM) schemes are quite small. Under real circumstances, a longer optical wavelength and a suitable zenith angle range can be selected to reduce turbulence effects for the satellite communication system through weak-to-strong turbulence.