Performance Analysis of Dual-Hop DF Multi-Relay FSO System with Adaptive Modulation

Abstract

The signal quality in high-bandwidth free space optical (FSO) systems deteriorates due to atmospheric turbulence and pointing errors. Employing techniques such as adaptive transmission and relay selection (RS) can mitigate their effects. This paper analyzes the performance of a dual-hop decode-and-forward multi-relay FSO system with an adaptive M-ary phase shift keying scheme. This analysis is based on the recently proposed Fisher–Snedecor F channel model and considers the impact of pointing errors. We propose two partial relay selection schemes based on the source-to-relay or relay-to-destination channel state information to reduce the complexity of the optimal relay selection scheme. In this investigation, we derive closed-form expressions for the outage probability, modulation level selection probability, and spectral efficiency (SE) and compare the performance of the proposed RS schemes under balanced and unbalanced link cases. We observe an improvement in the SE with an increase in the number of modulation levels and the number of relays. Moreover, it is noted that the performance of the system can be restricted by the quality of either the source-to-relay or the relay-to-destination link, even if the quality of the other link is perfect. Finally, the outcomes obtained through the derived expressions are validated using Monte Carlo simulations.