Using Spatial Diversity to Improve the Confidentiality of Atmospheric Free Space Optical Communication

Author

Puryear, Andrew ; Chan, Vincent W S

Author_Institution

Claude E. Shannon Commun. & Network Group, Massachusetts Inst. of Technol., Cambridge, MA, USA

fYear

2011

fDate

5-9 Dec. 2011

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

6

Abstract

Free space optical communication through the atmosphere has the potential to provide secure, low-cost, rapidly deployable, dynamic, data transmission at very high rates. Despite the ability for free space optical technology to transmit a narrow beam of light to a specific destination, it is still possible for an eavesdropper to gather light and decode information intended for another user. This paper addresses the use of spatial diversity to improve confidentiality, thereby impeding potential eavesdroppers. We find that spatial diversity with coherent detection and wavefront predistortion based on turbulence state feedback is an effectively technique to improve the confidentiality of free space optical communication.

Keywords

atmospheric turbulence; coherence; data communication; decoding; diversity reception; optical communication; space communication links; atmospheric free space optical communication; coherent detection; confidentiality; decode information; dynamic data transmission; eavesdropper; free space optical technology; low-cost data transmission; rapidly deployable data transmission; secure data transmission; spatial diversity; turbulence state feedback; wavefront predistortion; Apertures; Helium; Optical transmitters; Receivers; Signal to noise ratio; Vectors;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Global Telecommunications Conference (GLOBECOM 2011), 2011 IEEE

Conference_Location

Houston, TX, USA

ISSN

1930-529X

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-9266-4

Electronic_ISBN

1930-529X

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/GLOCOM.2011.6134426

Filename

6134426