SNR advantage of anisotropy in oceanic optical wireless communications links

Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of an optical wireless communication (OWC) link that operates in anisotropic oceanic turbulence is evaluated. To find the SNR advantage of the anisotropy in the oceanic turbulent medium, SNR in anisotropic oceanic turbulence is normalized by the SNR in isotropic oceanic turbulence. The dB values of this normalized SNR are examined versus the oceanic turbulence parameters of the ratio of temperature to salinity contributions to the refractive index spectrum, the rate of dissipation of mean-squared temperature, the rate of dissipation of kinetic energy per unit mass of fluid at various oceanic anisotropic factors, the avalanche multiplication factors, the radii of receiver aperture, link lengths, and detector responsivity values. It is found that as the oceanic turbulence becomes more anisotropic, at any link parameter, the SNR of the OWC link becomes advantageous over the isotropic counterpart. (c) 2019 Optical Society of America