Beam divergence changing mechanism for short-range inter-unmanned aerial vehicle optical communications

The problems associated with using a single fixed beam divergence for short-range inter-unmanned aerial vehicle free-space optical communications are discussed. To overcome the problems, a beam divergence changing mechanism is proposed. Four different methods are then proposed to implement the beam divergence changing mechanism. The performance of these methods is evaluated in terms of transmission distance under adverse weather conditions. The results show that the performance is greatly improved when the beam divergence changing mechanism is used.