Relay and forward in free space optical communication - A qualitative analysis

Abstract

Free space optical (FSO) communication systems have attracted great attention due to their ability to achieve high data rates. To increase the coverage area, multi-antenna systems were proposed, which failed to achieve diversity gains due to limitations of the feasible number of antennas per terminal and turbulent induced fading. Cooperative communication can overcome these drawbacks and this paper reviews relay assisted communication. The performance of Amplify and forward (AF), Decode and Forward (DF) and selective relaying protocols are analyzed and compared based on the metrics of outage analysis, BER analysis and communicating distance(s).