IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS, VOL. 19, NO.
2, FEBRUARY 2015
Channel Analyses Over Wide Optical Spectra
for Long-Range Scattering Communication
Changming Xu and Hongming Zhang
Abstract—Ultraviolet scattering communication provides none-
line-of-sight connectivity for two separated transceivers, but it is
limited by low emitting power and high atmospheric absorption in
long-range case. This paper adopts a Monte Carlo based multiple-
scattering model, and studies associated power losses of optical
signals from ultraviolet to visible and infrared bands. Aerosol
scattering and absorption coefficients dependent on wavelength
are calculated, and wide-spectra Mie phase function is further
derived. Data rates at different wavelengths are analytically com-
pared under a specified bit error rate with daytime background
light considered. Simulation results reveal that visible and in-
frared light have low path loss and high data rate advantages in
long-range scattering communication.
Index Terms—Monte Carlo, non-line-of-sight, scattering com-
munication, wide optical spectra.
I. I NTRODUCTION
U LTRAVIOLET (UV) scattering communication has been
studied for decades, mainly used to redirect the incoming
optical signals to different directions and thus offers much flex-
ibility to build a non-line-of-sight (NLOS) communication link
particularly when a direct line-of-sight (LOS) communication
link between a Tx and Rx is blocked for communication on
the move [1], [2]. But in long-distance NLOS communication,
this light is easy to be absorbed by atmosphere and its emitting
power is often a limit compared with visible or infrared (IR)
light. On the other hand, ultra-narrow bandwidth filters such as
Atomic Resonance Filter (ARF) have made great process these
years [3] and are successfully used in Submarine Laser Com-
munication Satellite (SLCSAT) [4] and meteorological laser
radar [5]. This technique tremendously reduces background
sunlight noise, and makes detecting weak visible or IR light
in free space optical communication (FSO) a reality.
Scattering and absorption occurs over wide optical spectra,
from ultraviolet to visible and infrared bands. Ultraviolet sig-
nals undergo much stronger scattering and absorption than visi-
ble and infrared signals. At short range, absorption makes little
effect and scattering help more UV light arriving at receiver.
At long range, scattering is fully performed and absorption
plays a key role. With the distance increasing, long wavelength
Manuscript received May 11, 2014; accepted November 30, 2014. Date of
publication December 10, 2014; date of current version February 6, 2015.
This work was supported by a grant from the Major State Basic Research
Development Program of China (973 program) (No. 2013CB329201) and the
National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (863
Program) (No. 2013AA013601). The associate editor coordinating the review
of this paper and approving it for publication was M. Brandt-Pearce.
The authors are with the Department of Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua
University, Beijing 100084, China, and also with the Tsinghua National Labo-
ratory of Information Science and Technology (TNList), Tsinghua University,
Beijing 100084, China (e-mail: xucm11@mails.tsinghua.edu.cn).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LCOMM.2014.2379658
1089-7798 © 2014 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
187
Fig. 1. Non-line-of-sight scattering communication model.
light will have more advantages in transmission. Numerous
researches on NLOS UV communication channel modeling
and experimentation have been reported recent years [6], [7].
However, scattering power loss over wide optical spectra has
not been studied, but definitely necessary for NLOS scattering
communication system design and performance study.
In this paper, we follow the Monte Carlo multiple scattering
channel modeling approach [8] in which we find key elements
for different wavelengths, including molecular and aerosol
scattering and absorption coefficients, and scattering phase
functions. In Section II, methods of coefficients calculation
are introduced based on large amount of meteorological data
and MODTRAN. A modified Mie scattering phase function
is deduced and the asymmetric factor for wide-spectra light
scattering is provided. Section III applies those results to
Monte Carlo simulation under different conditions. Channel
path losses and communication data rate are evaluated using
those parameters and phase functions at different wavelengths,
with different emitting powers and lighter filters, under different
communication ranges and visibilities.
II. M ONTE -C ARLO S IMULATION AND M ODIFIED M ODEL
Our analyses are based on Monte-Carlo model and the
communication structure is shown in Fig. 1. Denote the range
between the Tx and Rx by r. Define θ1 the transmitter elevation
angle and θ2 the receiver elevation angle. φ1 is the Tx beam
divergence and φ2 is the Rx FOV (field of view). θs is the angle
between the beam axis and FOV axis.
When a photon is emitted from the transmitter, it will prop-
agate a distance Δs before it is scattered. The distance Δs
between the transmitter and the first scattering point or between
two scattering points is determined by
ln η(s)
Δs = − , (1)
ks
where η(s) is a uniform random variable between zero and one,
ks is the scattering coefficient, which is the sum of molecule
Ray
(Rayleigh) scattering coefficient ks and aerosol (Mie) scat-
Mie
tering coefficient ks . The other two atmospheric coefficients,
Ray
the molecule absorption coefficient ka and aerosol absorption
Mie
coefficient ka , are also key parameters for determining the
scattering channel properties, which are shown next one by one.
188 IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS, VOL. 19, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2015

Ray
Rayleigh scattering coefficient ks is given by [9]
 
8π3 (m − 1)2 6(1 + δ) 1−δ
ksRay = 3 + , (2)
3 λ4 N 6 − 7δ 1+δ

where m is air refractive index, λ is wavelength in unit µm, N

is the molecular number density (2.54743 × 1019 cm−3 ) for
standard air, and δ is the polarization defect factor (0.035). At
sea level, m equals m0 which can be obtained by
2480990 17455.7
(m0 −1)×108 = 8060.51+ + . (3)
132.274−λ−2 39.32957−λ2
Ray
Rayleigh absorption coefficient ka is a combination of
different gas absorption such as H2 O, O3 , CO2 , and O2 . These
data are readily obtained by MODTRAN.
The Mie scattering and absorption coefficients can be ob-
tained by [10]
Fig. 2. Asymmetric factor (g) distribution versus wavelength. Particle radius
ksMie = NQsca πa2 , kaMie = NQabs πa2 , (4) is an average value of 0.1535 µm.

where a is the radius of the aerosol particle. Fitting with measurement and calculation data [13] show 115◦ is a suitable
the MODTRAN data, particles consist of 70% water-soluble choice for θs in [0.2,1.7] µm to ensure that the corresponding
particles with a radius of 0.005 µm and 30% dust particles with phase value is always close to the minimum phase value of
a radius of 0.5 µm[11]. Values N are obtained in both clear every wavelength (the extreme point). This choice gives µ =
weather of 23 km VIS (visibility) and haze weather of 5 km VIS cos θs = −0.423. Substituting it into (9) and then (9) into (8),
scat-Luo. The Mie scattering and absorption efficient factors we obtain a modified Mie scattering phase function suitable for
Qsca and Qabs can be obtained by [10]. wide optical spectra
To completely characterize a scattering channel over wide

optical spectra, phase function at different wavelengths is nec- 1 − g2 1
essary. The total scattering phase function is a weighted sum of pmie (θs ) = 3
4π (1 + g − 2g cos θs ) 2
2
Rayleigh scattering phase function pray (θs ) and Mie scattering 
phase function pmie (θs ) [8] g(3 cos2 θs − 1)
+ 5 . (10)
Ray 0.845(1 + g2 + 0.845g) 2
ks kMie
ptotal (θs ) = pray (θs ) + s pmie (θs ), (5)
ks ks
According to Mie theory, the asymmetric factor g is given by
in which pray (θs ) is given by ∞ 
  4 n(n + 2)

3 1 + 3γ + (1 − γ) cos2 θs
g= 2 ∑ n + 1 Re an a∗n+1 + bn b∗n+1
x Qsca n=1
pray (θs ) = , (6) 
4(1 + 2γ) 2n + 1
+ Re(an bn ) , (11)
n(n + 1)
where λ = 0.0178. The Mie scattering phase function has been
modified for UV signal as
where an and bn are functions of size parameter x = 2πa/λ and
 
1−g2 1 3 cos2 θs −1 complex refractive index m
pmie (θs ) = +f . (7)
4π (1+g2 −2g cos θs ) 23 2(1+g2 ) 2
3
mψn (mx)ψn (x) − ψn (x)ψn (mx)
an =
mψn (mx)ξn (x) − ξn (x)ψn (mx)
Parameter f takes a value of 0.5 for the UV region, but ψn (mx)ψn (x) − mψn (x)ψn (mx)
changes greatly with wavelength. So we generalize the previous bn = , (12)
Henyey-Greenstein (H-G) function to be applicable to a large ψn (mx)ξn (x) − mξn (x)ψn (mx)
range of wavelengths. We parameterize it by λ as [12] (1)
  where ψn (x) = x jn (x) and ξn (x) = xhn (x) are respectively the
1 1−g2  Bessel function and Hankel function, and the refractive index m
pmie (θs ) = +λ (3 cos θs −1) , (8)
2
(real part) is obtained from [11] and its value is from 1.51 to
4π (1+g2 −2g cos θs ) 32
1.53. Numerical results for g are shown in Fig. 2 where the
where summation for n is up to n = 10 for adequately high accuracy.
In the UV range, g is near 0.7, and the second term of (10)
−g(1 − g2 ) except (3 cos2 θs − 1) gives 0.1375. This value perfectly agrees
λ = 5 , (9)
2cosθs (1 + g2 − 2gcosθs ) 2 with that in (7) which is 0.1325.
From above analyses, all parameters and phase function in
for pmie (cos θs ) = 0. θs is a generalized lowest phase angle. As different wavelengths are available, and Monte-Carlo simula-
the method in [12], considering the refractive index [11], large tion to study the path loss can be performed as [8].
XU AND ZHANG: CHANNEL ANALYSES OVER OPTICAL SPECTRA FOR LONG-RANGE SCATTERING COMMUNICATION
TABLE I
S IMULATION PARAMETERS
Fig. 3. (23 km VIS) Path loss over wide spectra at 3 different ranges.
III. R ESULTS AND A NALYSES
In this section, we present numerical path loss results for a
wide wavelength range of [0.2,1.7] µm under different commu-
nication range, and data rate results under same bit error rate
(BER) and different visibility (VIS) conditions. The simulation
parameters are listed as Table I, not including all wavelengths.
Fig. 3 shows path loss distribution over wide optical spectra
at three different ranges. Except singularities due to absorption
peaks by some particular atmospheric constituents, path loss
first falls then rises with increased wavelengths. There is an
inflection point that has the lowest path loss. Longer trans-
mission distance, path loss falls more sharply and rises more
gently, with the lowest point moving to longer wavelength band.
This change proves that absorption plays a more important
role in long-range scattering channel. In our simulation, we
also find that path loss changing with elevation angle enlarging
have similar changing law with range increasing, because larger
elevation angles produce longer transmission path length in the
scattering geometry.
Path losses with continuous transmitting ranges at four wave-
lengths (266,532,1064,1550) nm are shown in Fig. 4. These
results are consistent with Fig. 3. Path loss increases with
transmitting ranges. Clearly at different wavelengths, path loss
obeys the power law of L = ξrα eβr , as [14], where ξ, α and β
are path loss factors which are non-linear functions of angles.
As the average scattering length is 1/ks , most of VL and IR
scattered photons are only scattered once during their transmis-
189
Fig. 4. (23 km VIS) Path loss for different ranges at 4 wavelengths.
sions. Once the scattering geometry is set, the transmission path
length is proportional to communication range, and absorption
effect will play the leading rule with the photon transmitted
farther after scattering.
Utilizing SPCTRAL2 [15], a neutral time of 9 o’clock in the
morning and a day of spring are chosen. The elevation angle
of sun within range of receiver FOV is set to 20 degree. Four
corresponding background powers are shown in Table I.
The average detected number of signal photons per bit is
Pr η f ηr λ/(Rhc), where Pr is receiving power, η f is the filter
transmission, ηr is the detector quantum efficiency and λ is
wavelength. Assuming threshold-based direct detection with
OOK modulation, the Poisson distributed symbol error prob-
ability is given by [16]
1 mT (λs + λb )k e−(λs +λb ) 1 ∞ λkb e−λb
Pe_OOK = ∑
2 k=0 k!
+ ∑
2 mT +1 k!
. (13)
λs is signal arrival rate and λb denotes the background ra-
diation photon count rate. The optimal detection threshold can
be obtained as mT = f loor(λs / ln(1 + λs /λb )) by minimizing
Pe _OOK . Fig. 5 depicts data rates versus emitting power at four
wavelengths, with a raw BER (no coding) requirement of 10−4 .
As ARF filter width is generally narrowed than 1 pm to 0.1 pm
[3], we choose a wider range to compare 10 pm and 1 pm
scenarios. Data rates decrease with range increasing and shorter
wavelength decreases faster. But when filter width enlarges,
shorter wavelength decreases more slowly than longer one. This
is because longer wavelength light has long-range transmission
advantage but high background noise disadvantage. Increasing
the emitting power can weaken this disadvantage and do benefit
to longer wavelength light. When the distance is 10 km, with
proper narrow-width filtering, the longer wavelength lights
perform distinctly better than the shorter ones.
Since visibility (VIS) reflects concentration of aerosols
which may enhance scattering and absorption effects in scat-
tering communication, we compare path loss under low VIS
condition (VIS = 5 km) with Fig. 5 in Fig. 6. Under low VIS
condition compared with high VIS, light scattering commu-
nication performs better at short distance but worse at large
distance as both scattering effect and absorption effect are
strengthened. Longer wavelength light attenuates slowly with
distance increasing because its absorption effect is weaker.
190
Fig. 5. (23 km VIS) Data rates with different ranges and filter bandwidths.
The required BER is 10−4 .
Fig. 6. (5 km VIS) Data rates with different ranges and filter bandwidths.
The required BER is 10−4 . Not Available (N.A.) means the results are too low
to be shown.
IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS, VOL. 19, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2015
IV. C ONCLUSION
With development of device technology, wide-spectra light
scattering communication through a long-range NLOS channel
is becoming more attractive and can meet a practical appli-
cation need. In this paper, a Monte-Carlo multiple-scattering
method is adopted to analyze path loss under different con-
ditions. Methods to calculate the atmospheric coefficients at
different wavelengths are summarized and the Mie scattering
phase function is modified. Afterwards, path losses at different
wavelengths and communication ranges, and data rates under
given BER and visibilities are numerically studied. Results
reveal that longer wavelength light has low path loss and high
communication data rates in long-range scattering transmis-
sion, under the condition that background light is properly
filtered. It needs to be concerned that these analyses are based
on on-off keying (OOK) modulation. Some other modulation
and detection modes can reduce its dependence on ultra-narrow
bandwidth filters, causing visible and infrared band light more
practical in long-range scattering communication.
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