Time-domain model for simulating turbulence effects on terrestrial FSO systems

The paper deals with a time-domain model for generating random time series of received optical power and angle-of-arrival for the simulation of terrestrial Free-Space Optical systems under the influence of atmospheric turbulence. Based on the closed-form turbulence theory the time series are generated by means of suitable filtering of generated random numbers. The simulator of received optical power may serve in Monte-Carlo simulations of complex communication protocols and their interference with short-time fades due to atmospheric turbulence. The simulator of random angle-of-arrival can be used, for example, to test the performance of tracking systems and simulate additional loss due to short-time increases of the detector coupling error.