Since free-space optical (FSO) systems are usually installed on high buildings and building sway may cause vibrations in the transmitted beam, an unsuitable alignment between transmitter and receiver together with fluctuations in the irradiance of the transmitted optical beam due to the atmospheric turbulence can severely degrade the performance of optical wireless communication systems. In this paper, asymptotic bit error-rate (BER) performance for FSO communication systems using transmit laser selection over atmospheric turbulence channels with pointing errors is analyzed. Novel closed-form asymptotic expressions are derived when the irradiance of the transmitted optical beam is susceptible to either a wide range of turbulence conditions (weak to strong), following a gamma-gamma distribution of parameters α and β, or pointing errors, following a misalignment fading model where the effect of beam width, detector size and jitter variance is considered. Obtained results provide significant insight into the impact of various system and channel parameters, showing that the diversity order is independent of the pointing error when the equivalent beam radius at the receiver is at least 2(min{α,β})^1/2 times the value of the pointing error displacement standard deviation at the receiver. Moreover, since proper FSO transmission requires transmitters with accurate control of their beamwidth, asymptotic expressions are used to find the optimum beamwidth that minimizes the BER at different turbulence conditions. Simulation results are further demonstrated to confirm the accuracy and usefulness of the derived results, showing that asymptotic expressions here obtained lead to simple bounds on the bit error probability that get tighter over a wider range of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) as the turbulence strength increases.

In this letter, transmit laser selection for multiple-input-single-output free-space optical communication systems with intensity modulation and direct detection over strong atmospheric turbulence channels is analyzed. Assuming channel side information at the transmitter and receiver, a transmit diversity technique based on the selection of the optical path with a greater value of scintillation has shown to be able to extract full diversity as well as providing better performance compared to other alternatives recently proposed such as orthogonal space-time block codes and repetition codes. Simulation results are further demonstrated to confirm the analytical results obtained for a diversity order of two.

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A thorough investigation of the impact of nonzero boresight pointing errors on the ergodic capacity of multiple-input/multiple-output (MIMO) free-space optical (FSO) systems with equal gain combining (EGC) reception under different turbulence models, which are modeled as statistically independent, but not necessarily identically distributed (i.n.i.d.) is addressed in this paper. Novel closed-form asymptotic expressions at high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for the ergodic capacity of MIMO FSO systems are derived when different geometric arrangements of the receive apertures at the receiver are considered in order to reduce the effect of nonzero inherent boresight displacement, which is inevitably present when more than one receive aperture is considered. As a result, the asymptotic ergodic capacity of MIMO FSO systems is evaluated over log-normal (LN), gamma-gamma (GG) and exponentiated Weibull (EW) atmospheric turbulence in order to study different turbulence conditions, different sizes of receive apertures as well as different aperture averaging conditions. It is concluded that the use of single-input/multiple-output (SIMO) and MIMO techniques can significantly increase the ergodic capacity respect to the direct path link when the inherent boresight displacement takes small values, i.e. when the spacing among receive apertures is not too big. The effect of nonzero additional boresight errors, which is due to the thermal expansion of the building, is evaluated in multiple-input/single-output (MISO) and single-input/single-output (SISO) FSO systems. Simulation results are further included to confirm the analytical results.

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Atmospheric turbulence produces fluctuations in the irradiance of the transmitted optical beam, which is known as atmospheric scintillation, severely degrading the link performance. In this paper, a scheme combining transmit laser selection (TLS) and space-time trellis code (STTC) for multiple-input-single-output (MISO) free-space optical (FSO) communication systems with intensity modulation and direct detection (IM/DD) over strong atmospheric turbulence channels is analyzed. Assuming channel state information at the transmitter and receiver, we propose the transmit diversity technique based on the selection of two out of the available L lasers corresponding to the optical paths with greater values of scintillation to transmit the baseline STTCs designed for two transmit antennas. Based on a pairwise error probability (PEP) analysis, results in terms of bit error rate are presented when the scintillation follows negative exponential and K distributions, which cover a wide range of strong atmospheric turbulence conditions. Obtained results show a diversity order of 2L-1 when L transmit lasers are available and a simple two-state STTC with rate 1 bit/(s∙Hz) is used. Simulation results are further demonstrated to confirm the analytical results.