Atmospheric turbulence-induced fading channel model for space-to-ground laser communications links.

The fading channel model for generating a random time-varying signal based on the atmospheric turbulence spectrum for space-to-ground laser links is discussed. The temporal frequency characteristics of the downlink are theoretically derived based on the von Karman spectrum. The rms wind speed based on the Bufton wind model is used as the transverse wind velocity, which makes the simulation simple. The time-varying signal is generated as functions of the receiver aperture diameter and the rms wind speed. The simulated result of the time-varying signal is presented and compared with the gamma-gamma distribution based on the scintillation theory in a moderate-to-strong-turbulence regime.