THz Links Performance Study for Gamma Turbulence Links with Path Loss and Pointing Errors

Abstract

Over the last years the rapidly growing demands for higher wireless data transfer rates have recently motivated the research community to focus on the exploitation of higher frequency bands, such as the infrared (IR) frequency band and even more recently the terahertz (THz) frequency band (0.3-10 THz) which bridges the gap between millimeter wave (MMW) and IR frequency ranges. Nevertheless, the development of both free space optical (FSO) and THz communication links depends strongly on the randomly varying characteristics of their atmospheric channels along with the stochastic misalignment between transmitter and receiver terminals. Thus, in this work we first introduce Gamma distribution atmospheric turbulence (AT) model in the THz area. In this context, an outage performance comparison between a line of sight (LOS) THz link and a FSO link in terms of outage probability (OP) metric is provided for different AT and stochastic pointing error (PE) conditions. Additionally, the OP for the THz link due to free space path loss (FSPL) and atmospheric attenuation along with stochastic PEs is evaluated. Novel closed-form OP expressions are derived, while proper analytical results reveal and quantify the impact of the above factors. Simulation results are further included to validate our analytical results.