Influence of atmospheric turbulence on OAM-based FSO system with use of realistic link model

• Performance of OAM-based FSO over realistic FSO link is analyzed.
• Comparison is made between realistic Pump and simplest Kolmogorov models.
• Higher channel capacity is projected when the realistic Pump spectrum is used.
• Pump model is much more appropriate in any analysis of OAM-based FSO systems.

We study the influence of atmospheric turbulence on OAM-based free-space optical (FSO) communication by using the Pump turbulence spectrum model which accurately characterizes the realistic FSO link. A comprehensive comparison is made between the Pump and Kolmogorov spectrum models with respect to the turbulence impact. The calculated results show that obtained turbulence-induced crosstalk is lower, which means that a higher channel capacity is projected when the realistic Pump spectrum is used instead of the Kolmogorov spectrum. We believe that our results prove that performance of practical OAM-based FSO is better than one predicted by using the original Kolmogorov turbulence model.