A spatial diversity for free space optical communications over atmospheric turbulence channel : a performance analysis

Abstract EN

Free space optical (FSO) communication is a cost effective andhigh bandwidth access technique.

The fading of received signal that induced by the atmospheric turbulence is the major impairment in the FSO links.

Receiver spatial diversity is one of the atmospheric turbulence mitigation techniques that usedfor improving the system performance.

This paper presents a performance analysis study of a single input multiple output (SIMO) spatial diversitytechnique for the terrestrial FSOlink.

The achieved performance improvements over atmospheric turbulence channel for different turbulence levels show the effectiveness of the spatial diversity technique to mitigate the channel turbulence effects.

A lower bit error ratesand higher diversity gain is achievedby increasing the number of receiver photodetectors.