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Optics Communications 280 (2007) 264–270

www.elsevier.com/locate/optcom

Suppression of intensity fluctuations in free space high-speed

optical communication based on spectral encoding
of a partially coherent beam
Gennady P. Berman a, Alan R. Bishop b, Boris M. Chernobrod a,*
,
Dinh C. Nguyen c, Vyacheslav N. Gorshkov a,d
a
Theoretical Division and CNLS, MS B213, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, United States
b
Theory, Simulation and Computation Directorate, MS B210, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, United States
c
ISR-6 and Accelerator Physics, Los Alamos National Laboratory, MS H85, Los Alamos, NM 87545, United States
d
The Institute of Physics, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Nauki Ave. 46, Kiev-39, 03650, MSP-65, Ukraine

Received 16 March 2007; received in revised form 24 August 2007; accepted 27 August 2007

Abstract

A new concept of a free space, high-speed (Gbps) optical communication system based on spectral encoding of radiation from a
broadband pulsed laser is developed. It is shown that, in combination with the use of partially coherent laser beams and a relatively slow
photosensor, scintillations can be suppressed by orders of magnitude for distances of more than 10 km.
 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

PACS: 42.79.Sz

1. Introduction
Free space optical communication (FSOC) has data rate
limitations due to atmospheric turbulence. Laser beams
experience three major effects under the influence of turbu-
lence. First, the beam phase front is distorted by fluctua-
tions in the refractive index, causing intensity fluctuations
or scintillations. Second, eddies whose size is greater than
the beam diameter randomly deflect the laser beam as a
whole; this phenomenon is called beam wandering. Third,
propagation through turbulent atmosphere causes the laser
beam to spread more than predicted by diffraction theory.
Scintillations are the most severe problem and result in a
significant increase of the bit error rate (BER) and conse-
quent degradation of the laser communication system per-
formance. For example, a gigabit data rate communication
channel can operate with BER of 109 over a distance not
*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 505 664 0915; fax: +1 505 665 3003.
E-mail address: boris@lanl.gov (B.M. Chernobrod).
more than 2.5 km, even for clear weather [1,2]. Several
approaches have been developed to mitigate the effects of
turbulence on laser communication. They include: aperture
averaging, partially coherent beams, adaptive optics, and
array receivers (see the detailed reviews in Refs. [1,3]). Nev-
ertheless, scintillations continue to limit the performance of
FSOC. New approaches are needed to overcome this limi-
tation. It is well known that partially coherent beams
(beams with multiple coherent spots in their transverse sec-
tion) are less affected during propagation through atmo-
spheric turbulence than a fully coherent beam [4–13].
Namely, the additional beam spreading due to the atmo-
spheric turbulence [4,5], the beam quality degradation [6],
the scintillation index [7–10] are less pronounced for par-
tially coherent beam compared with fully coherent beam.
Recently the techniques of scintillation reduction based
on the utilization of partially coherent beams were demon-
strated [10–13]. To form partially coherence, authors cross.
[10] used a static phase diffuser. Combining partially coher-
ent beams with a time-averaging leads to a significant scin-

0030-4018/$ - see front matter  2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.optcom.2007.08.055
 G.P. Berman et al. / Optics Communications 280 (2007) 264–270
tillation reduction with the corresponding improvement of
the BER by several orders of magnitude [10]. Another pos-
sibility is related to utilization of spatial light modulator
(SLM). The main advantage of SLM compared with rotat-
ing phase diffuser is that the random phase distribution at
the transmitter plane could change at higher rate. As we
show in Section 4, higher SLMs frame rate corresponds
to higher data rate of the communication channel. Authors
of Refs. [11,12] proposed an alternative approach using a
multiple beams with different wavelengths. This approach
was experimentally demonstrated [13] using multiemitter
beam, constructed by spatially combining outputs of sev-
eral single mode fiber-coupled diode lasers. It was shown
theoretically [11,12] and experimentally [13] that the scintil-
lation index can be substantially reduced if individual
beams overlapped at the detector aperture and were prop-
erly separated at the transmitter plane. Unfortunately, the
time-averaging method cannot be applied directly to giga-
bit rate communication. The main limitation of this
method is related to the requirement that the correlation
time between different spatially coherent spots be shorter
than the response time of the photodetector. This means
that the SLM must have an operating frequency m higher
than the bandwidth of the photodetector, corresponding
to its inverse response time m  T1. Since the photodetec-
tor bandwidth must be higher than the data rate of the
communication channel mCOM, T1  mCOM, the highest
data rate is limited by the highest frequency of SLM
m  mCOM. To date, the highest frequency SLMs based on
multiple quantum wells (MQW) can only operate at fre-
quencies up to tens of MHz [14].
In the present paper we propose to extend the technique
of scintillation suppression, based on time-averaging of a
partially coherent beam (TAPCB), to gigabit rate FSOC.
Our idea is to combine TAPCB with a spectral encoding
technique. Originally spectral encoding was applied to fiber
optics communication for code-division-multiple-access
[15]. In this method, information is encoded in the form
of amplitude modulation of the spectral components of
the laser pulse which has a broad spectrum. For long dis-
tance communication, the broad spectrum light source
could be a Ti: sapphire laser. For short-distance communi-
cation it could be an LED as well. Each pulse or sequence
of pulses (depending on the averaging response time of the
photosensor) can contain kilobits of data. If the pulse rep-
etition rate is about 1 MHz, then the transmitted data rate
is gigabits per second. SLMs based on MQW technology
with a frame rate of several MHz are now available [14].
2. Scintillations reduction due to time-averaging of a
partially coherent beam
It is well-established that for long distances the scintil-
lation index of plane and spherical waves propagating
through the atmospheric turbulence asymptotically tends
to unity [16]. For an initially partially coherent beam,
the asymptotic behavior depends on the relation between
265
the correlation time of the source and the response time
of the photodetector. If the average correlation time of
two different coherent spots in the beam’s cross-section
is shorter than the response time of the photodetector,
then the scintillation index asymptotically tends to zero
[17–20]. If the correlation time of the coherent spots is
longer than the response time of the photodetector, then
the scintillation index asymptotically tends to unity
[20,21]. As was shown in Ref. [20], these properties of a
partially coherent beam can be easily explained if we
assume that the scintillations at the photodetector follow
Gaussian statistics. Indeed, if the coherence radius, rc, of
the initial beam is significantly smaller than the beam
radius, r0, the process of propagation of the laser beam
can be considered as the independent propagation of a
large number of coherent beams. Consequently, the inten-
sity fluctuations of each coherent region caused by atmo-
spheric turbulence are statistically independent. With
increasing the propagation distance, the individual coher-
ent spots overlap due to diffraction effects. According to
the central limit theorem, the intensity, which is the result
of the contributions of a large number of independent
regions, has a normal statistical distribution. The suppres-
sion of scintillations in the signal measurements is strictly
due to the unique properties of the Gaussian statistics.
The fluctuations in the signal generated by a photodetec-
tor with slow response time are proportional to the fol-
lowing integral over light intensity absorbed during the
response time:
Z t Z t
2
hiðtÞiðtÞi  hiðtÞi  dt1 dt2 hðt  t1 Þhðt  t2 Þ
1 1
 ½hIðt1 ÞIðt2 Þi  hIðt1 ÞihIðt2 Þi: ð1Þ
Here i(t) is the photocurrent, I(t) is the light intensity, and
h(t  t1,2) is the time response function of the photodetec-
tor. Usually h(t  t1,2) has rather complex structure and
can be characterized by two or even more character re-
sponse times related to different physical processes such
as the electron-hole recombination, carriers transmit time,
intrinsic capacitance and resistance, etc. Below, under the
term response time T we mean a shortest character time
of the photodetector. According to the extended Huy-
gens–Fresnel principle [1], the optical field at the receiver
plane can be expressed in terms of the integral optical field
at an intermediate plane:
Z Z  
2 s ~
ikj~ rj
Eð~r; L; tÞ  d sEð~
s; z; tÞ exp þ iWð~
s;~
r; tÞ ;
R 2ðL  zÞ
ð2Þ
where Wð~ rÞ is the complex phase of the wave propagating
s;~
through the turbulent medium from the point (s,z) to the
point (r,L). As follows from expression (2), the values of
the averaging in expression (1) are of fourth-order in the
field moment:
s1 ; z; t1 ÞE ð~
hEð~ s3 ; z; t2 ÞE ð~
s2 ; z; t1 ÞEð~ s4 ; z; t2 Þi: ð3Þ
266 G.P. Berman et al. / Optics Communications 280 (2007) 264–270

For Gaussian statistics, this fourth-order moment can be has the form
expressed in terms of the second order moments: oC4 i
¼ ðD1 þ D2  D01  D02 ÞC4  F ðf;~ q01 ;~
q1 ;~ q02 ÞC4 ;
q2 ;~
s1 ; z; t1 ÞE ð~
hEð~ s3 ; z; t2 ÞE ð~
s2 ; z; t1 ÞEð~ s4 ; z; t2 Þi of 2q
s1 ; z; t1 ÞE ð~
¼ hEð~ s3 ; z; t2 ÞE ð~
s2 ; z; t1 ÞihEð~ s4 ; z; t2 Þi ð6Þ
s1 ; z; t1 ÞE ð~
þ hEð~ s3 ; z; t2 ÞE ð~
s4 ; z; t2 ÞihEð~ s2 ; z; t1 Þi: ð4Þ where f ¼ x=L; ~q1;2 ¼ ~r1;2 =q0 ; q01;2
~ r01;2 =q0
¼~ (x is the longi-
tudinal coordinate),~ r01;2 are the transversal coordinates,
r1;2 ;~
The typical difference between the times, t1 and t2, in (1) L is the propagation length, q0 is the normalizing trans-
can be estimated as jt1  t2j  T. If the response time of kq2
verse scale, which is chosen below, q ¼ L0 , where k is the
the photodetector, T, exceeds the average correlation time wave number.
between two coherent spots sc, T  sc, the second term on
the right-hand side of the expression (4) is equal to zero. As F ðf;~
r1 ;~ qÞ ¼ H ðf;~
r2 ;~ r1 þ ~q=2Þ þ H ðf;~
r1  ~q=2Þ
a result, from Eq. (1) we obtain hI(t1)I(t2)i = hIi2. This þ H ðf;~r2 þ ~
q=2Þ þ H ðf;~r2  ~
q=2Þ
shows that the scintillation index r2 = (hI2i  hI i2)/hIi2 is  H ðf;~
r1 þ~
r2 Þ  H ðf;~
r1 ~
r2 Þ: ð7Þ
equal to zero. In the opposite case, when the correlation
time is much longer than the photodetector response time, In the expression (7) we introduced the new variables
T  sc, the second term in the expression (4) is equal to the 1 1
first term, and the scintillation index is equal to unity. r1 ¼ ð~
~ q1  ~ q01  ~
q2 þ ~ q02 Þ; r2 ¼ ð~
~ q1  ~
q2  ~q01 þ ~ q02 Þ;
2 2
As the above considerations show, in order to exploit the 1
unique properties of Gaussian statistics, the time response q ¼~
~ q1 þ ~ q01  ~
q2  ~ q02 ; R ¼ ð~q1 þ ~ q01 þ ~
q2 þ ~ q02 Þ:
4
of the photodetector must be much longer than the inverse
ð8Þ
frame rate of the SLM. Another requirement is that the
number of individual coherent spots in the initial beam In these new variables, Eq. (6) takes the form
must be sufficiently large. In other words, the coherence oC4 i
radius, rc, must be much smaller than the beam radius, r0. ¼ ðrR rq þ rr1 rr2 ÞC4  F ðf;~
r1 ;~ qÞC4 ;
r2 ;~ ð9Þ
of q
Note that the minimum size of the initial coherence radius,
rc, is limited by two physical effects. First, the angular where
Z Z
spreading of the laser beam is defined by the diffraction
angle, h  k/rc. Consequently, for a very small coherent H ðf;~
qÞ ¼ 8 Un ðf;~
jÞ½1  cos ~
jð~ q2 Þd 2~
q1  ~ j; ð10Þ
radius, rc, the beam spread will be unacceptably large. Sec-
ond, for a very small initial coherence radius, the diffraction and Un ðf;~
jÞ is the spectral density of the structure function
effect will dominate in the formation of the beam coherence of the refractive index, which is given by
Z Z
in comparison with the influence of the atmospheric turbu- 0 0
hdnðf;~
qÞdnðf;~ q Þi ¼ 2pdðf  f Þ Un ðf;~
jÞ
lence. In this case, according to the Van Cittert–Zernike
theorem [22] the coherence radius will increase during the
 expð~
jð~ q0 ÞÞd 2 j:
q ~ ð11Þ
propagation. Thus, a very important requirement can be
formulated: in order to significantly suppress the laser beam Following Tatarskii [24], we chose the spectral density of
scintillations, one must work in the regime in which an opti- the structure function of the refractive index in the form
mal initial coherence radius, rc, is chosen which satisfies the  
2 11=3 j2
inequality, rmin < rc < rmax. The optimal initial coherence Un ðf;~
jÞ ¼ 0:033C n j exp  2 : ð12Þ
jm
radius, rc, depends on the strength of the atmospheric tur-
bulence and the propagation length, L. The adaptive con- In this case the analytical approximations for the function
trol of the initial coherence can be achieved using a H ðf;~
qÞ have the form
feedback channel. Either a rf or an optical channel could 8
< 1:64C 2n k 2 q20 q2 l01=3 ; for q  l0 ;
provide feedback from the measurements of the scintillation q0
H ðf;~
qÞ ¼ ð13Þ
index at the receiver to the SLM at the laser source. : 1:24C 2 k 2 q5=3 q5=3 ; for q  l0 ;
n 0 q0

3. Calculation of the scintillation index for the case of strong where l0 = 5.92jm. The transverse scale, q0, is the scale of
turbulence variation of the phase structure function of the plane waves
corresponding to the path L. It is defined by the equation
1=3
Our analysis is based on the equation for the fourth- [23]: 1:64C 2n k 2 Lq20 l0 ¼ 1.
order correlation function derived by Tatarskii in the Mar- According to the procedure discussed in Section 2, we
kov approximation [23,24]. The equation for the correla- assume that the light source emits a partially coherent light
tion function with the Gaussian statistics at the source plane, f = 0.
Hence, the fourth-order correlation function can be
C4 ðf;~ q01 ;~
q1 ;~ q02 Þ ¼ hEðf;~
q2 ;~ q1 ÞE ðf;~
q01 ÞEðf;~
q2 ÞE ðf;~
q02 Þi
expressed in terms of the second order correlation
ð5Þ functions
 G.P. Berman et al. / Optics Communications 280 (2007) 264–270 267

C4;0 ð~ q01 ;~
q1 ;~ q02 Þ
q2 ;~ Ref. [18] did not discuss the details of the intermediate
¼ hEðf ¼ 0;~ q1 ÞE ðf ¼ 0;~
q01 ÞihEðf ¼ 0;~
q2 ÞE ðf ¼ 0;~
q02 Þi approximations. Although, their results are qualitatively
similar to ours, the final expressions are different. In partic-
q1 ÞE ðf ¼ 0;~
þ hEðf ¼ 0;~ q02 ÞihEðf ¼ 0;~
q2 ÞE ðf ¼ 0;~
q01 Þi;
ular, we obtained a much simpler expression for the scintil-
ð14Þ lation index (see below the expression (16).) Authors of
where the normalized second order correlation function is Ref. [19] solved the quantum kinetic equation for the pho-
given by the expression ton distribution function. Their results are also qualita-
tively similar to ours. In Ref. [20] the author considered
C2;0 ð~ q01;2 Þ ¼ hEðf ¼ 0;~
q1;2 ;~ q1;2 ÞE ðf ¼ 0;~q01;2 Þi an incoherent source, which corresponds to the case of
! ! the coherence radius equal to zero in our consideration.
q21;2 þ ~
~ q02
1;2 ð~
q1;2  ~ q02
1;2 Þ The scintillation index in this case is equal to zero (see
¼ exp  exp  :
2r20 r2c Fig. 1), what corresponds to the case of infinitely strong
turbulence in Ref. [20]. The formula (16) describes the case
ð15Þ
of finite coherence radius, when the scintillation index is
In Eq. (15), r0 is the beam radius and rc is the coherence ra- different from zero even in the case of very strong turbu-
dius. We consider the case of small coherence radii in com- lence. The detailed description of the perturbation ap-
parison with the beam radius: rc  r0. The conventional proach leading to the expression (16) is presented in the
approach to the problem of laser beam propagation is Appendix.
based on the assumption of small deviations of the beam h i
Z 1 0:286 0:43 0:157l ðnÞ
 þ 2
2

parameters from those which correspond to free space r2 ¼ 0:68a0 ðn ¼ 1ÞQ1=6 q1=6 dn
bðnÞ cðnÞ c ðnÞa2 ðnÞ
;
2 5=6
propagation [1]. This approach is limited to the conditions 0 ð1n Þa0 ðnÞcðnÞbðnÞa2 ðnÞ
of weak turbulence or short propagation lengths. In Ref. ð16Þ
[9] the strong fluctuation case and a static diffuser were
considered. The authors of Ref. [9] used the formalism of where
the extended Huygens–Fresnel theory under strong fluctu-
kl20 1 q2 r 2 1 1 1
ation conditions developed by Andrews et al. [1]. In the Q¼ ; a0 ¼ n þ 2 þ 20 ; 2
¼ 2þ 2;
L rf 4n r r 4r0
case of the static diffuser, the advantage of using partially  f 2 c2
coherent beam was predicted in moderate turbulence re- 1 1 2 qr
l¼ þ ; m¼ n þ 20 ;
gime [9]. Another approach was developed by Yakushkin 1  n 2na0 r2f a0 r2f 4n
[17]. His approach is based on the fact that for any rela- a0 n2 l2
tively long distance, the coherence radius is smaller than b¼mþ1nþ ; c ¼ m þ 2ð1  nÞ;
2
the beam radius. Starting with the exact solution of Eq.
l2 1
(9) for a beam with rc = 0, Yakushkin developed a pertur- a2 ¼ þ 2 :
4c 8n a0
bation theory in which the small parameter, rc/r0  1, is
the ratio of the coherence radius rc to the beam radius r0. The scintillation index decreases as the initial coherence ra-
In Ref. [17] the case of an initially fully coherent beam dius, rc, decreases, as can be seen in Fig. 1. For the coher-
was considered. Thus, his theory was actually an asymp- ence radii less than 4, the scintillation index has a
totic theory, applicable to relatively long distances. In quadratic-like dependence. For a certain value of the
our case, we have initially a partially coherent beam. Prop- coherence radius, a larger beam radius corresponds to a
agating through the turbulent atmosphere, the partially smaller scintillation index. Actually, the scintillation index
coherent beam experiences two opposite effects. The first decreases linearly with an inverse number of coherent spots
effect is an increase of the coherence radius due to diffrac- r2  N 1 2 2
c ¼ r c =r0 . Thus the scintillation index decreases by
tion. The contribution of this effect is of the order of an order of magnitude as the coherence radius rc decreases
drc  (k/rc)L. The second effect is a decrease of the coher- from 3 to 1 (see Fig. 1).
ence sport due to the influence of the turbulence. This effect
is characterized by the scale of the phase structure function, 4. Design of an optical system based on spectral amplitude
1=3 1=2
q0 ¼ ð1:64C 20 k 2 l0 LÞ . If the turbulence is strong en- encoding of a broad band pulsed laser
ough, the decrease of the coherence radius dominates even
at the relatively small propagation length. For example, for We propose to encode digital data in the spectrum of
the values of parameters: C 2n ¼ 1013 m2=3 ; rc ¼ a wide-band source such as Ti:sapphire laser. We assume
102 m;l0 ¼ 103 m;j ¼ 2p=k ¼ 4  106 m1 , the propaga- that this laser operates at a high-repetition rate. Usually
tion length where drc  q0 2 · 102 m, is L = 115.6 m. Ti:sapphire lasers can operate at a repetition rate in a
For the beam radius, r0 = 101 m, the assumption rc  r0 broad range from a few Hz up to GHz. If each series
is correct at this distance. Hence, in the case of strong tur- of N laser pulses (the number of pulses depends on the
bulence, our approach is applicable to any distance. In Ref. averaging time of the photosensor) contains kilobits of
[18] the approach of Ref. [17] was applied to the case of an data and the series repetition rate is several MHz, then
initially partially coherent beam. However, the authors of the data rate is a few Gbps. Usually, information is
268 G.P. Berman et al. / Optics Communications 280 (2007) 264–270
Fig. 1. The dependence of the scintillation index on the initial coherence
radius (for the center of the beam). In the dimensionless quantities rc,0 the
unit is q0 ¼ ½1:64C 2n k 2 Ll01=3 1=2 . The following values of the parameters
were used: L = 3.7 km, C 2n ¼ 1013 m2=3 ( the dashes lines), L = 10 km,
C 2n ¼ 1:4  1014 m2=3 (the solid lines), k = 1.55 lm, l0 = 2 · 102 m.
encoded as an amplitude modulation in time of a contin-
uous wave laser beam. In this case, intensity fluctuations
make significant contributions to the BER. Our spectral
domain encoding technique is less sensitive to intensity
and phase fluctuations because the information is
decoded in a massively parallel way using a relatively
slow photosensor, which minimizes the scintillations by
time-averaging. Spectral domain encoding can be
achieved using a wide-band Ti:sapphire laser with an
electro-optical SLM, as demonstrated in Fig. 2. The spec-
trum of each laser pulse is dispersed spatially and then
encoded by the SLM whose pixels can be turned on
and off. The light traversing the SLM will have certain
spectral bins turned on or off, depending on whether
the corresponding pixels of the SLM are on or off. In
our approach, the spatial coherence of the initial beam
Fig. 2. Schematic for wide-band laser communication with wavelength encoding.
is also formed by the SLM. The encoded signal is sent
through a second SLM which modifies the transverse
coherence of the beam. The optimal value of the radius
of coherence, rc, is maintained by using a feedback loop
between the SLM and the photosensor (not shown). At
the receiver, the wavelength-modulated signal is dispersed
in an optical spectrometer, i.e. a monochromator, and
detected by a high-speed charge-coupled device (CCD).
The electronic signal from the CCD is then processed
by a high-speed data processing unit. Note, that in our
method the spectral grating spreads the spectrum of the
laser pulse along a single coordinate. Therefore we need
a single array LSM for encoding and a single array
CCD for sensing.
Let us estimate the values of parameters needed to
achieve Gbps rate. The grating dispersion is described by
the grating equation
k
sin hinc  sin hdiff ¼ m ; ð17Þ
d
where hincis the incident angle, hdiff is the diffraction angle,
m is the diffraction order, and d is the grating period. Usu-
ally, the incident angle is fixed hinc = const. Then the angle
variation dhdiff as a function of the wavelength variation dk
is
dk
dhdiff ¼ m : ð18Þ
d cos hdiff
The spatial image at the SLM plane of the spectral interval,
corresponding to the distance between two neighboring
bits, must exceed the size of individual pixel of the SLM,
lpxl. Then dhdiffF P lpxl, where F is the focal distance of
the imaging lens. From the expression (24) we obtain the
following estimate of the spectral interval
lpxl d cos hdiff
dk ¼ : ð19Þ
Fm
 G.P. Berman et al. / Optics Communications 280 (2007) 264–270 269

Using (19), we estimate the information capacity, M,of the Appendix

laser pulse which has the spectral width Dk,
Dk DkFm The solution of Eq. (9) can be written in the integral
M¼ ¼ : ð20Þ form
dk lpxl d cos hdiff Z
For the values of parameters Dk = 40 nm (for the wave- C4 ð~
P ; fÞ ¼ C4;0 ð~
P 0 ÞGð~
P;~
P 0 ; fÞd~
P 0; ð21Þ
length k = 1.55 lm this spectral width corresponds to a
pulse duration 200 fs), F = 10 cm, m = 2, lpxl = 10 lm, where ~ P is the set ~
r1 ;~ q; ~
r2 ;~ R, and Gð~P;~
P 0 ; fÞ is the Green’s
d1 = 1.5 · 103 mm1, cos hdiff = 0.6, we obtain function. We assume that the main contribution to the inte-
M = 2 · 103. Using a commercially available CCD array gral is due to areas of coherence, in which the difference be-
with a frame rate of 1 MHz, a single array MQW encoding tween two vectors has the value j~ q01;2 j  qc , where qc
q1;2  ~
SLM with the frame rate of 1 MHz, 10 · 10 pixels MQW is the coherence radius for the propagation length f. Note
SLM for the coherence control with the frame rate of that initially (f = 0), the coherence radius is defined by the
10 MHz, and a commercial femtoseconds fiber laser (Polar- source qc = rc. For these areas the values of the vectors ~ r2
Onycs Inc., model Mercury) with the pulse duration of and ~q are of order qc. In this case, the values of the vector
200 fs and the repetition rate 30 MHz, we achieve the data r1 are of the order of the beam radius q0, which at the
~
rate of 2 Gbps. Note, that although the narrowband source plane is equal to the initial beam radius r0. We as-
assumption is valid in our case, Dk/k = 0.0258  1, for sume that the coherence radius is much smaller than the
such short optical pulses the effects of the time spreading beam radius. Hence we have r2, q  r1. Since the function
and fluctuation of arrival time due to the atmospheric tur- C4, must be symmetric with respect to r1 and r2, there are
bulence become significant [25]. An increase of bit error other areas where r2  r1, q . Taking into account these
rate appears when individual pulses overlap. Fortunately, inequalities we can obtain the zeroth order approximation
in the spectral encoding method the time interval between for the function F ðf;~ r1 ;~ qÞ:
r2 ;~
pulses is much larger than pulse duration. According to F 0 ðf;~
r1 ;~ qÞ ¼ H ðf;~
r2 ;~ r2 þ ~
q=2Þ þ H ðf;~
r2  ~
q=2Þ: ð22Þ
Ref. [25] the pulse spreading effect is described by
1=2 5=3 In this approximation the Green’s function has the form
T ¼ ðT 20 þ 8aÞ , where a ¼ 0:391C 20 LL0 c2 , C 20 is the
refraction index structure constant, L0 is the outer-scale G0 ð~
P ;~
P 0 ;fÞ
size of turbulence. The fluctuation of the arrival time is  
4r2 = T2. In our case the parameters are: C 20 ¼ q4 iq ~ ~0 0 0 0
¼ exp ½ðR  R Þð~
q ~
q Þ þ ð~
r1 ~
r1 Þð~
r2 ~
r2 Þ
1013 m2=3 , L = 104 m, L0 = 4 m, and T0 = 0.2 ns (this 16p4 f2 f
time interval corresponds to the encoding dip width  expffð~ r02 þ ð~
r2 ~ q0 Þ=2Þ2  fð~
q ~ r02  ð~
r2 ~ q0 Þ=2Þ2 g:
q ~
0.04 nm). In this case, T  T0 = 0.87 fs. The time interval ð23Þ
between pulses corresponding to the repetition rate,
30 MHz, is 33 ns. Thus, the time spreading and fluctuation In Eq. (23), we use the quadratic approximation for the
of the arrival time are negligible compared with the interval function H ðf;~
qÞ (the upper line of expression (13)). Writing
between pulses. the Green’s function in the form G = G0 + DG, and using
the Green’s function formula, we obtain the following inte-
gral equation:
5. Conclusion
Gð~
P ;~
P 0 ; fÞ ¼ G0 ð~
P ;~
P 0 ; fÞ
We have presented the new concept of a free space, a Z f Z
few Gbps speed optical communication system based on  df0 DFG0 ð~ P 0 ; f0 ÞGð~
P 00 ; ~ P 00 ; f  f0 Þd~
P ;~ P 00 df0 ;
0
spectral encoding of radiation from a broadband pulsed
laser. We have shown that, in combination with control ð24Þ
of the partial coherence of the laser beam and the rela- 0
where DF = F  F . Using (21) and (24), we obtain the
tively slow photosensor, scintillations can be suppressed integral equation for C4, (which is equivalent to the differ-
by orders of magnitude for communication distances ential Eq. (9)):
beyond 10 km. Z
C4 ð~
P ; fÞ ¼ C4;0 ð~
P 0 ÞG0 ð~
P 0; ~
P ; fÞd~ P0
Acknowledgements Z f
 df0 DFG0 ð~P;~ P 0 ; f0 ÞC4 ð~
P 0 ; f  f0 ÞdP 0 : ð25Þ
The authors would like to thank A.A. Chumak for 0

many stimulating discussions. This work was carried out
under the auspices of the National Nuclear Security
Administration of the US Department of Energy at Los
Alamos National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-
AC52-06NA25396.
We use Eq. (25) in our perturbation theory. The zeroth
approximation for C4 is given by the first term on the
right-hand side of Eq. (25). The first-order approximation
term is obtained by substituting the zeroth approximation
term in the second term on the right-hand side of Eq. (25).
270 G.P. Berman et al. / Optics Communications 280 (2007) 264–270

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~
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