Scintillation Index for Spherical Wave Propagation in Anisotropic Weak Oceanic Turbulence with Aperture Averaging under the Effect of Inner Scale and Outer Scale

• Published in: Photonics Vol. 9; no. 7; p. 458
• Main Authors: Lin, Zhiru, Xu, Guanjun, Zhang, Qinyu, Song, Zhaohui
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 01.07.2022
• Subjects: anisotropic turbulence; Anisotropy; aperture averaging effect; Apertures; Efficiency; Influence; inner scale; Marine environment; Oceanic turbulence; Optical communication; outer scale; Performance degradation; Power consumption; Refractivity; Scintillation; scintillation index; Seawater; Security; Spherical waves; Turbulence; Turbulence models; Underwater; Underwater communication; Wave propagation; Wireless communications
• ISSN: 2304-6732; 2304-6732
• DOI: 10.3390/photonics9070458

Due to the advantages of high transmission rate, lower power consumption, high security, etc., underwater wireless optical communication (UWOC) has been widely studied and considered as a potential technique for underwater communication. However, its performance is severely degraded by oceanic turbulence due to refractive index fluctuations, which is caused by the change of inhomogeneous ocean environment. Within our derived spatial power spectrum model under anisotropic oceanic turbulence, we conducted a detailed investigation for a spherical wave propagating in weak anisotropic turbulence in this paper. Based on the derived oceanic spectrum, we proposed a scintillation index model for spherical wave in anisotropic oceanic turbulence considering the aperture averaging effect at non-zero inner scale and limited outer scale. Besides, we analyze the aperture averaging scintillation index under the influence of channel parameters such as inner and outer scales. Simulation results reveal that the scintillation index increases with the increase of the outer scale, while the inner scale induces an opposite trend on the scintillation index. Moreover, the inner scale exhibits a larger impact than the outer scale on the UWOC system over weak oceanic turbulence.