Performance analysis of MRC spatial diversity receiver system for satellite-to-ground downlink optical transmissions

Abstract

The performances of satellite-to-ground downlink optical communications over Gamma-Gamma distributed turbulence are studied for multiple apertures receiver system. Maximum ratio combining (MRC) technique is considered as a combining scheme to mitigate the atmospheric turbulence under thermal noise limited conditions. Bit-error rate (BER) performances for on-off keying (OOK) modulated direct detection optical communications are analyzed for MRC diversity receptions through an approximation method. To show the net diversity gain of multiple apertures receiver system, BER performances of MRC receiver system are compared with a single monolithic aperture receiver system with the same total aperture area (same average total incident optical power) for satellite-to-ground downlink optical communications. All the numerical results are also verified by Monte-Carlo (MC) simulations.