Maritime Mobile Optical-Propagation Channel Measurements

Optical free-space communications (FSO) is an emerging solution to operate very high capacity non-detectable links. The performance of laser communication systems is reduced by random power fluctuations of the received signal. In this paper fade statistics obtained from experimental data were compared with statistical mathematical models and it was found that the log-normal model fits well under a wide range of turbulence conditions. Therefore we investigate in a more practical way the performance of laser transmission in a commercially available mobile communication system. Received power vectors were collected during a ship-to-land communication trial in summer 2008 at the Baltic Sea.