Average capacity of airborne optical links over exponentiated Weibull atmospheric turbulence channels

In this paper, we present analytical expressions for the average capacity of airborne optical communication systems under the combined influence of atmospheric turbulence and aero-optics effect. The atmospheric turbulence channel is modeled by the exponentiated Weibull distribution. We derive a novel expression for the average capacity in terms of a convergent series involving a Meijer’s G function. We evaluate the average capacity under the influence of various flight altitude and propagation distance. Also the effect of aperture averaging on the capacity is investigated. Results show that the influence is very strong in the cases of long optical links and small aperture diameters of the receiver. Increasing the receiver aperture causes an increase in the capacity.