MIMO FSO communication using subcarrier intensity modulation over double generalized gamma fading

Abstract

Atmospheric turbulence-induced fading is known to have a serious detrimental effect on the performance of free-space optical (FSO) communication. The involvement of multiple lasers and photodetectors in FSO systems offers an effective way to overcome fading. Very recently, a new generic fading model, called double-generalized gamma (double GG), is developed for accurately describing irradiance fading over a wide range of turbulence conditions. Therefore, for a general and exact study of the multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) FSO system, the double GG fading model is adopted in this paper. We investigate the MIMO FSO systems using subcarrier intensity modulation. Two typical transmit diversity schemes, repetition code (RC) and orthogonal space-time block code (OSTBC), are considered. We first propose a new power series expression for the probability density function of the double GG fading. Then we derive the average error rate expressions for both schemes in terms of double power series. The truncated forms of the derived power series enable the rapid and accurate numerical computation of the error rates. Furthermore, we present the asymptotic error rate analyses at high electrical signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for both schemes. Closed-form diversity order and coding gain for both schemes are also obtained. Our numerical results, verified by simulation, confirm that RC outperforms OSTBC for MIMO FSO systems with subcarrier intensity modulation in double GG fading. The asymptotic coding gain of the RC scheme over the OSTBC scheme is analytically quantified for varying degrees of the fading strength.