Experimental verification of the limits of optical channel intensity reciprocity

Optical data links through the atmosphere suffer from turbulence-induced signal scintillation. In a coaxially-symmetric bidirectional link scenario, the variations of the axial intensities at both ends are correlated. This relation can be used as an inherent feedback mechanism, with negligible delay, to enhance the capacity of the transmission system. By experiment, we show the correlation coefficient of both received signals can reach values close to one over long atmospheric distances, provided the receiver apertures are smaller than specific intensity speckle structures, while the correlation reduces gradually with larger apertures. This allows transmission capacity to be optimized with adaptive transceiver systems that take into account the degree of correlation.