The bit error rate (BER) performance of the free space optical (FSO) link suffers from the atmospheric turbulence. By employing additional transmit and receive apertures at the transmitter and receiver, respectively, the error rate of the FSO communication system can be significantly improved. However, the pointing errors (PEs), generated because of the building sway, have the potential to eradicate the benefits of the multiple transmit and/or receive apertures-based FSO communication system. Therefore, for a general and realistic study of the FSO multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system, the effect of PEs in the Gamma-Gamma (GG) fading atmospheric fluctuations is considered in this paper. We study two schemes for the FSO MIMO systems: 1) equal gain combining (EGC), and 2) maximal ratio combining (MRC). A new power series-based representation is proposed for the probability density function of the GG fading FSO links with PEs. This new series representation contains only the terms with exponent of the random variable (RV) as compared to the closed-form representation, which contains the Meijer-G function of the RV. Then, we derive the average BER for both combining schemes over the GG fading FSO links with PEs. By using the derived BER expressions, we derive the asymptotic BER for both schemes. The analytical diversity order and combining gains for both systems are also obtained. The effect of PEs over the performance of the schemes is analyzed under different scenarios and it is observed that the PEs significantly degrade the diversity of the FSO MIMO system. It is deduced by simulation and analysis that though the EGC scheme is simpler to implement in practice but the MRC scheme is more rugged to the large PEs.

In this paper, the transmission of signals in a hybrid satellite-terrestrial link is considered. In particular, we address the problem of amplify-and-forward (AF) relaying in a hybrid satellite-terrestrial link, where a masked destination node receives the relayed transmission from a terrestrial link and direct transmission from the satellite link. The satellite-relay and satellite-destination links are assumed to follow the Shadowed-Rician fading; and the channel of the terrestrial link between the relay and destination is assumed to follow the Nakagami-m fading. The average symbol error rate of the considered AF cooperative scheme for M-ary phase shift keying constellation is derived for these generalized fading channels. Moreover, analytical diversity order of the hybrid system is also obtained.

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Performance of cooperative spectrum sensing with multiple antennas at each cognitive radio (CR) is discussed in this paper. The CRs utilize selection combining of the decision statistics obtained by an improved energy detector for making a binary decision of the presence or absence of a primary user (PU). The improved energy detector uses an arbitrary positive power p of amplitudes of samples of the PU's signals. The decision of each CR is orthogonally forwarded over imperfect reporting channels to a fusion center, which takes the final decision of a spectrum hole. We derive expressions of the probabilities of false alarm and missed detection of the proposed cooperative spectrum sensing scheme. By minimizing the total error rate (sum of the probability of missed detection and the probability of false alarm) we derive a closed-form solution of the optimal number of CRs required for cooperation. It is shown by simulations that by using multiple antennas at the CRs, it is possible to significantly improve reliability of spectrum sensing with extremely low interference levels to the PU at very low (much less than 0 dB) signal-to-noise ratio of the PU-CR link.

In this paper, the maximal ratio combining (MRC) scheme in Shadowed-Rician (SR) fading land mobile satellite (LMS) channels is studied. The MRC scheme for SR fading LMS channels has been studied in existing literature; however, most of the existing analytical results are in the form of infinite power series, which are not in closed-form. In this paper, we derive approximate closed-form expressions of the probability density function and cumulative distribution function of the received signal-to-noise ratio of the MRC based receiver in SR fading LMS channels. Then we provide approximate closed-form expressions of the bit error rate (BER), outage probability, and capacity of the considered scheme. One of the derived closed-form BER expressions is found useful for obtaining the analytical diversity order and coding gain of the considered MRC scheme.

In this letter, the transmission of signals in a hybrid satellite-terrestrial free space optical (FSO) cooperative link is considered. In particular, we address the problem of amplify-and-forward (AF) relaying in a hybrid satellite-terrestrial FSO cooperative link, where a masked destination node receives the relayed transmission from an FSO link. The satellite-relay link is assumed to follow the shadowed-Rician fading, and the irradiance of the FSO link between the relay and destination is assumed to follow the gamma-gamma distribution. The approximate average symbol error rate of the considered AF cooperative scheme for M-ary phase shift keying constellation is derived; analytical diversity order of the hybrid cooperative system is also obtained.