We study a dual-hop relaying system, composed of mixed radio frequency (RF)/free-space optical (FSO) links. Partial amplify-and-forward relay selection is assumed, which is based on outdated channel state information (CSI). The RF link is subject to Rayleigh fading, while the FSO link is affected by atmospheric turbulence, modeled by Gamma-Gamma distribution. Novel analytical expressions for the outage probability and average bit error rate (BER) are derived. Numerical results are presented and validated by Monte-Carlo simulations. The outage probability and average BER dependence on turbulence strength, average signalto-noise ratio (SNR) over RF hop, average electrical SNR over FSO hop, number of relays, and rank of selected relay, are also investigated, while the effect of time correlation between current source-relay channel and its outdated CSI, is considered. The results illustrate that the outdated CSI used for the relay selection has a strong effect on the system performance, especially in weak turbulence conditions of the FSO hop. Furthermore, the improvement of the system performance with increase of the number of the relays is highly dependent on the FSO channel state.

In this paper, we analyze the outage capacity performance of free-space optical (FSO) systems. More precisely, taking the stochastic temporary blockage of the laser beam, atmospheric turbulence, misalignment between transmitter laser and receiver photodiode and path loss into account, we derive novel accurate analytical expressions for the outage capacity. The intensity fluctuations of the received signal are modeled by a Gamma-Gamma distribution with parameters directly related to the wide range of atmospheric conditions. The analytical results are validated by Monte Carlo simulations. Furthermore, when the intensity fluctuations are caused only by atmospheric turbulence, derived expressions are reduced to the simpler forms already presented in literature. The numerical and simulation results show that the link blockage causes appearance of the outage floor that is a significant energetic characteristic of an FSO system. The results also show that there exists an optimal value of the laser beam radius at the waist for minimizing outage probability in order to achieve the specified outage capacity. This optimal value depends on atmospheric turbulence strength and standard deviation of pointing errors, but it is also strongly dependent on the probability of link blockage.

This paper presents the exact average bit error rate (BER) analysis of the free-space optical system employing subcarrier intensity modulation (SIM) with Gray-coded quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM). The intensity fluctuations of the received optical signal are caused by the path loss, atmospheric turbulence and pointing errors. The exact closed-form analytical expressions for the average BER are derived assuming the SIM-QAM with arbitrary constellation size in the presence of the Gamma–Gamma scintillation. The simple approximate average BER expressions are also provided, considering only the dominant term in the finite summations of obtained expressions. Derived expressions are reduced to the special case when optical signal transmission is affected only by the atmospheric turbulence. Numerical results are presented in order to illustrate usefulness of the derived expressions and also to give insights into the effects of different modulation, channel and receiver parameters on the average BER performance. The results show that the misalignment between the transmitter laser and receiver detector has the strong effect on the average BER value, especially in the range of the high values of the average electrical signal-to-noise ratio.

In this paper, an average bit error rate (BER) analysis of the free-space optical (FSO) system applying subcarrier intensity modulation with binary differential phase-shift keying is presented. Multiple receiver apertures are considered, when maximal-ratio combining (MRC) is employed. Intensity fluctuations due to atmospheric turbulence are modeled by Melaga (M) distribution, taking the pointing errors effect into account. Novel closed-form average BER expression is derived in terms of Meijer's G-function. Utilizing derived expression, numerical results are presented and confirmed by Monte Carlo simulations. The effects of atmospheric turbulence and pointing errors parameters, as well as the number of photodetectors, on the average BER performance are discussed. Employing multiple receivers with MRC leads to the improvement of the FSO system performance. Numerical results illustrate that this improvement depends on the FSO channel conditions. In addition, it is proved that SNR unbalance scenario can seriously deteriorate system performance.