Performance improvement of MIMO FSO systems against destructive interference

Abstract

Although multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technique is used in free space optical (FSO) systems to reduce the effect of atmospheric turbulence, however, employing this technique without sufficient attention to the interference of laser beams not only does not reduce the effect of atmospheric turbulence, but also it can significantly degrade the performance of the FSO system. This study investigates that the average intensity of laser beams at the receiver aperture of MIMO FSO systems is very sensitive to small variations of path lengths between the transmitter and receiver. Therefore, the destructive interference that degrades the performance of MIMO FSO systems compared to equivalent single-input single-output (SISO) FSO ones is due to the difference in path lengths of laser beams between transmitter and receiver apertures. For this reason and in order to mitigate the interference effect, the authors compensate small changes of path lengths through adjusting the sending times and the initial parameters of laser beams in the transmitter apertures. The authors' analysis supported by numerical results show that the adjustment of laser parameters could increase the chance of peak intensity of MIMO-FSO systems to be higher than the peak intensity of equivalent SISO-FSO ones.