Comparative Analysis of Terahertz Propagation Under Dust Storm Conditions on Mars and Earth

TL;DR

This paper models and compares how dust storms on Mars and Earth affect Terahertz communication links, providing insights into link attenuation and capacity under different dust conditions using Monte Carlo simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a modified Monte Carlo simulation method for estimating THz link attenuation due to dust storms on Mars and Earth, including a channel capacity model for outdoor environments.

Findings

Dust storms significantly increase THz link attenuation, especially on Earth.

Attenuation varies with dust density, distance, frequency, and visibility, with different behaviors on Mars and Earth.

Channel capacity drops sharply during dust storms, affecting outdoor THz communication reliability.

Abstract

Reliable Terahertz (THz) links are necessary for outdoor point-to-point communication with the exponential growth of wireless data traffic. This study presents a modified Monte Carlo simulation procedure for estimating THz link attenuation due to multiple scattering by dust particles on the THz beam propagation path. Scattering models are developed for beams through dust, based on Mie and Rayleigh approximations for corresponding frequencies for Earth (0.24 THz) and Mars (1.64 THz). The simulation results are compared, considering parameters such as the number of Monte-Carlo photon (MCP) packets, visibility, dust particle placement density along the beam, frequency, and distance between the transmitter and the receiver. Moreover, a channel capacity model was proposed, considering THz link attenuation due to dust storms, spreading loss and molecular absorption loss for Earth and Mars outdoor environments. Simulation results for Earth show that link attenuation increases with dust particle placement density, distance and frequency, and attenuation decreases with visibility. On Mars, similar results are obtained, except that the attenuation is variate around a constant value with the frequency increase. Channel capacity is estimated for Earth and Mars environments considering time and distance-dependent scenarios. Time windows that show a sudden drop of dust particles along the beam provide opportunities to communicate with high reliability. Moreover, increasing the distance between the transmitter and receiver severely reduces the channel capacity measurement in strong dust storm conditions in both environments. Our study has found that weak dust storms have relatively little effect on Mars, but much larger effects on Earth.