Analysis
of Exponential Coverage Processes with Application to Optical Communication
Which Avoids Clouds
We examine the probability of successful free space optical communication from below the cloud layer to above it, in the context of air-to-air and air-to-ground applications. The analysis models clouds as randomly located sets with random diameters and exploits ties between coverage problems and classical queueing theory. We present an extended numerical example to illustrate the derived results and conclude with a brief discussion of non-optical communication applications of this work.
One ingredient of the analysis, the discovery of a new property of first passage times of a finite state birth-death processes, may be of interest to some in its own right.