Scintillations of LED sources in oceanic turbulence

The scintillation index of light emitting diode (LED) sources is evaluated when such sources are employed in oceanic wireless optical communication (UWOC) links. In the formulation, LED source radiation is taken to be perfectly incoherent with a Gaussian field distribution. We have utilized the scintillation index solution of an incoherent source in atmospheric turbulence, together with our recently obtained expression that expresses the structure constant of atmospheric turbulence in terms of the oceanic turbulence and UWOC link parameters. Oceanic turbulence parameters of interest are the ratio of temperature to salinity contributions to the refractive index spectrum, rate of dissipation of kinetic energy per unit mass of fluid, rate of dissipation of mean-squared temperature, and viscosity. UWOC link parameters are the LED source size, link length, and the wavelength. Scintillation index results are presented for various variations of the oceanic turbulence and UWOC link parameters. (C) 2016 Optical Society of America