M-ary phase shift keying-subcarrier intensity modulation performance in strong oceanic turbulence

Abstract

In strong oceanic turbulence, we investigate the bit error rate (BER) performance of underwater wireless optical communication links by employing phase shift keying subcarrier intensity modulated Gaussian laser beam at the transmitter and positive-intrinsic-negative photodetector having finite sized aperture at the receiver. Using the extended Huygens–Fresnel principle, which is conventionally used to analyze the optical beam propagation through turbulence, we evaluate the optical intensity and corresponding signal power over the receiver aperture. Gamma–gamma statistical model for the received intensity is adopted due to strong oceanic turbulence and the required aperture averaged scintillation for this model is obtained by the use of asymptotic Rytov theory. In our performance investigation, we consider the effects of various oceanic turbulences, modulation, receiver noise type, and the photodetector parameters on the BER performance.