Multihop FSO Over Exponentiated Weibull Fading Channels With Nonzero Boresight Pointing Errors

Abstract

The end-to-end (EE) average bit error rate (ABER) performance of a decode-and-forward-based multihop free-space optical communication system is investigated over composite exponentiated Weibull fading channels with nonzero boresight pointing errors considered. In particular, the cumulative distribution function of the aggregated fading channel for non-identically and independently distributed multihop system is derived. Then, the analytical expression of EE ABER with $M$ -ary phase shift keying subcarrier intensity modulation is achieved in terms of Gauss–Laguerre quadrature rule considering aperture averaging effect. The results show that the ABER performance is mainly limited by nonzero boresight pointing errors for larger receiver aperture size. The comparison with Monte Carlo simulation verifies the validity of the proposed ABER model.