The Influence of Boundary Layer Turbulence on the BER of 2.4 GHz Microwave Communication

The turbulence scintillation has significant effect on wireless communication. This paper studies the intensity of turbulence, scintillation index and scintillation BER of the 2.4 GHz band. We estimate the intensity of turbulence on microwave band by combining the coefficient A, B and measured data. We find that the parameter of temperature-humidity has great influence on the microwave band than that on the optical band. According to the classification method proposed by Davis, the turbulence on microwave band belongs to strong turbulence. Then we analyze the scintillation index on microwave band under zero inner scale condition and non-zero inner scale condition respectively and derived the microwave scintillation BER under different modulation modes through the microwave scintillation index. As the research results: the microwave scintillation index is inversely proportional to the frequency but it is proportional to the turbulence scale and propagation distance. The scintillation index of spherical wave is higher than that of plane wave. The scintillation BER of DPSK modulation method is the lowest among DPSK, OOK and QPSK, and a lower microwave frequency can also decrease the scintillation BER. The inner-scale of turbulence has significant effects on the effective propagation distance. The effective propagation distance may change a few hundred meters when the inner scale changes a few millimeters. In order to reduce the scintillation BER in the microwave communication, we should choose the appropriate frequency, modulation mode, propagation distance and turbulent environment.