Analysis of field correlations in atmospheric optical MIMO systems

In this paper, we evaluate the absolute field correlations for a free space optical (FSO) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) link operating in a turbulent atmosphere. Such knowledge is needed in heterodyne reception to keep all the optical detectors within the region in which a predefined correlation value is fulfilled. The variations of the absolute field correlations versus the longest distance between the detectors are found for different array, medium and receiver parameters such as the number of beamlets, the radius of the radial array, beamlet size, link length, wavelength, structure constant and the position of the detectors.