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IEEE Communications Letters

Performance Analysis of Classical Data Transmission Over a Quantum Channel in the Presence of Atmospheric Turbulence

Chetan Waghmare, Ashwin Kothari, Prabhat Kumar Sharma

Published Jun 9, 2023• 7 citations
Publisher

Abstract

This letter presents the performance analysis of classical data transmission over a quantum channel in the presence of atmospheric turbulence. To transmit classical data, quantum coherent states are modulated over a log-normal turbulent channel for satellite-to-ground applications. The expression for the number of photons in the turbulent coherent state is approximated. Performance analysis is done in terms of error probability, channel capacity, and quantum bit error rate (QBER). The simulation results are presented using the Monte-Carlo simulation method. Numerical results show that the error performance improves with increasing the number of signal photons. However, for turbulence strength greater than 0.8, QBER increases more rapidly with a higher number of signal photons. Hence, a trade-off is essential between an achievable QBER and the number of signal photons.

DOI
10.1109/lcomm.2023.3284900

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This letter presents the performance analysis of classical data transmission over a quantum channel in the presence of atmospheric turbulence. To transmit classical data, quantum coherent states are modulated over a log-normal turbulent channel for satellite-to-ground applications. The expression for the number of photons in the turbulent coherent state is approximated. Performance analysis is done in terms of error probability, channel capacity, and quantum bit error rate (QBER). The simulation results are presented using the Monte-Carlo simulation method. Numerical results show that the error performance improves with increasing the number of signal photons. However, for turbulence strength greater than 0.8, QBER increases more rapidly with a higher number of signal photons. Hence, a trade-off is essential between an achievable QBER and the number of signal photons.
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This paper investigates the performance of coherent-state quantum optical wireless communication systems operating over atmospheric turbulence channels with pointing errors (PEs). The average error probability (AEP) and average achievable rate (AAR) are analyzed for on–off keying (OOK) and binary phase-shift keying (BPSK) signaling under photon-counting (PC), homodyne, and optimal Helstrom detection. The proposed framework jointly incorporates deterministic path loss, atmospheric turbulence, and PEs, and accommodates multiple statistical channel models, including Gamma-Gamma (GG), doubly inverted Gamma-Gamma (IGGG), and Fisher-Snedecor FFF distributions, within a unified analytical formulation. Closed-form expressions for AEP and AAR are derived via direct probability density function (PDF)-based integration of the conditional error probability, along with high-photon-number asymptotic approximations that provide insight into performance scaling behavior. Numerical results validate the analytical expressions and demonstrate the impact of PEs on system performance. The analysis further enables systematic comparison between classical and optimal quantum detection schemes and quantifies the achievable performance gains under different channel conditions. These results provide useful design insights for modulation and receiver selection in turbulent free-space optical (FSO) communication systems.
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The effect of atmospheric turbulent environment on the performance of free-space quantum communication is analysed. Based on the existing mathematical model of atmospheric turbulent fluid motion, the three most influential physical factors, i.e. wind speed, temperature and humidity, are abstracted out and simulated to study the variation of quantum channel utilisation, quantum channel entanglement, channel capacity and fidelity in amplitude damped channels under the atmospheric turbulent environment parameters. After a comprehensive analysis of the simulation results, it can be preliminarily judged that an increase in all three physical factors will increase the intensity of atmospheric turbulence and reduce the performance of quantum communication, and the magnitude of the influence is: temperature > wind speed > humidity. Therefore, corresponding adjustment strategies should be adopted to improve the communication performance of quantum communication and ensure the reliability of communication.
We develop an exact error probability framework for quantum free space optics (FSO) communication over atmospheric channels with turbulence and pointing errors under a physically admissible bounded transmissivity model. The proposed framework is grounded in the fundamental physical observation that, in a quantum optical channel, the random channel quantity is the transmissivity itself, namely, the fraction of transmitted photons collected at the receiver, and must therefore take values only in the physically admissible interval [0,1]. This constraint is generally violated when classical turbulence models are interpreted directly as transmissivity models in quantum settings. Accordingly, we model the turbulence-induced transmissivity as a Beta distributed random variable over (0,1), which has recently been shown to provide accurate fitting under different turbulence conditions while preserving physical admissibility. We then integrate deterministic atmospheric loss and pointing errors into a unified equivalent transmissivity model and derive exact expressions for its probability density function and moment generating function. Building upon this statistical characterization, we derive novel exact average error probability expressions for binary modulation under both quantum and classical receivers. Finally, we verify the analysis using Monte Carlo simulations, quantify the impact of turbulence and pointing errors, and demonstrate the performance advantage of quantum optimal detection in photon-limited quantum FSO channels.