Improved simulation method for urban free-space optical links based on the finite Markov state model

An improved method is proposed to simulate the scintillation introduced by the turbulence, based on the finite Markov state model. As a contrast to the literatures, uniformly distributed variables take place during a certain state, which contributes to equivalent simulation of the intensity fluctuations with fewer states than the traditional Markov model. It’s also discovered that the proposed Markov model with 20 states provides a satisfactory approximation to the experimental results in the auto-covariance analysis. Moreover, the outage probability and mean fading time are more accurate than those of the traditional Markov model with equivalent states. © 2017, Tianjin University of Technology and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany.