Effect of fog on free-space optical links employing imaging receivers

On the Use of NB-IoT over GEO Satellite Systems with Time-Packed Optical Feeder Links for Over-the-Air Firmware/Software Updates of Machine-Type Terminals

The verticals of 5G, such as the automotive, smart grid, and smart cities sectors, will bring new sensors and IoT devices requiring Internet connectivity. Most of these machine-type terminals will be sparsely distributed, covering a very large geographical area and, from time to time, will have to update their software, firmware, and/or other relevant data. Given this situation, one viable solution to implement the "Over-the-Air" update of these IoT terminals can be done with the aid of GEO satellite systems. However, due to the ultra-dense radio frequency reuse factor that contemporary High-Throughput Satellite (HTS) systems implement in the access link to serve the IoT terminals, the use of a time-packed Free Space Optical (FSO) link represents a practical solution to avoid the bottleneck that the satellite gateway experiences in the feeder link. The performance of both Detect-and-Forward and Decode-and-Forward relaying strategies are studied, assuming that the single-carrier M-PAM symbols that are transmitted on the optical feeder link are mapped into M-QAM symbols that modulate the multiple sub-carriers of the OFDM-based radio access link. In addition, the benefits of encapsulating the NB-IoT frames into DVB-S2(X) satellite frames is also analyzed in detail. The effects of the impairments introduced in both the optical feeder and radio access links are characterized in detail, and the end-to-end error correction capabilities of the Modulation and Coding Schemes (MCS) defined in the contemporary releases of the NB-IoT and DVB-S2(X) standards are studied for different working regimes.

Off-axis spatiotemporally gated multimode detection toward deep fog imaging

Towards better imaging through fog for vehicles, we developed an off-axis spatiotemporally gated multimode laser scanning imaging system. Utilizing fog mimicking liquid suspension, we tested the imaging system with different levels of scattering. The experimental results suggest that the system can yield high quality images at seven scattering path lengths, which far exceeds the capability of conventional imaging systems. We also found that the multimode detection can not only make the system robust in the presence of aberration but also help to reduce the speckles in images for the case of coherent illumination.

Precise size distribution measurement of aerosol particles and fog droplets in the open atmosphere

A precise measurement for the aerosol particle size distribution and fog droplet size distribution simultaneously in the open atmosphere is proposed. The extinction coefficient and small-angle forward scattering measurement are integrated into the detection for particle size distribution in the open atmosphere, and can achieve the fine detection of the particles in the atmosphere with radius between 0.1 to 30 μm. The key technology including optimal scattering angle in small-angle forward scattering measurement and optimal wavelengths selection are discussed and solved in detail. The fourteen different particle size distributions including aerosol size distributions and fog droplet size distributions are used for the determination of optimal forward scattering angle and wavelengths. The optimal forward scattering angle is calculated to be 1.1°. Seven wavelengths for extinction coefficients and five wavelengths for forward scattering coefficients are chosen for the retrieval of particle size distribution in the measurement. The regularization inversion of optical parameters for the retrieval of particle size distribution is described. The aerosol particle size distributions measured by particle spectrometer and actual fog particle size distributions are used for the method test and the reconstructions of particle size distributions. The inversion results show that the method can achieve the precise measurements of aerosol particle size distribution and fog droplet size distribution. The error influence on the inversion results of distributions is discussed. Based on the sensitivity analysis of inversion results, the feasibility of measurement in the real atmosphere is analyzed and discussed, and the scheme of detection system is provided.

Influence of fog on the signal to interference plus noise ratio of the imaging laser radar using a 16-element APD array

This paper investigates the signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR) performance of the imaging laser radar (ILR) system operating at a wavelength of 905 nm using an avalanche photodiode array under the fog condition. We analysis the glow image of the light source, which is formed by the laser spot irradiated on a standard Lambertian target. Based on the proposed theoretical model, we determine the interference due to the glow inter-channel crosstalk under different fog conditions for a targeted channel. We show that, for transmission spans less than several tens of meters the interference due to glow crosstalk is higher than the fog (light to medium) induced losses. However, for a link range longer than 21 m the glow crosstalk induced interference is lower than the heavy fog induced attenuation. The proposed system performance is evaluated by developing an experimental test bed and using a dedicated indoor atmospheric chamber under homogeneously controlled fog conditions. We show that, under different fog conditions experimental results for changing SINR levels match well with the predicted data. The results shown can be used for design optimization of the ILR system when operated under fog conditions.