Chaotic Free-Space Laser Communication over a Turbulent Channel

The dynamics of errors caused by atmospheric turbulence in a self-synchronizing chaos-based communication system that stably transmits information over a $\ensuremath{\sim}5\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{k}\mathrm{m}$ free-space laser link is studied experimentally. Binary information is transmitted using a chaotic sequence of short-term pulses as a carrier. The information signal slightly shifts the chaotic time position of each pulse depending on the information bit. We report the results of an experimental analysis of the atmospheric turbulence in the channel and the impact of turbulence on the bit-error-rate performance of this chaos-based communication system.