Measurements of indoor/outdoor atmospheric turbulence through optical triangulation method

Abstract

Atmospheric turbulence degrades the performance of wireless optical communication links. This phenomenon distorts the light wave-front, and changes the spatial optical power distribution, spread and wander of the beam on the receiver plane. In this paper we present measurements of indoor and outdoor atmospheric turbulence taken using a simple and low-cost device based on an optical triangulation method. The device tracks a Gaussian beam due to the beam wander effect and measures the effective Gaussian width due to beam spread in order to calculate the refractive index structure constant in real time. Thus, the device operation principle, the outdoor/indoor turbulence profile during the day, the hotspot dispersion and the beam width variation are shown.