IEEE PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGY LETTERS, VOL. 23, NO.

13, JULY 1, 2011 839

A Simple, Accurate Approximation to the Sum of
GammaGamma Variates and Applications in MIMO
Free-Space Optical Systems
Kostas P. Peppas, Member, IEEE
AbstractIn this letter, we propose a simple accurate
closed-form approximation to the probability density func-
tion (pdf) of the sum of independent, identically distributed
gammagamma (G-G) random variables. It is shown that the pdf
of the G-G sum can be efciently approximated by the pdf of an
distribution. Based on this approach, simple precise approx-
imations for important performance metrics of multiple-input
multiple-output (MIMO) free-space optical systems operating
over G-G fading are presented. The accuracy of the proposed
method is substantiated by various numerically evaluated and
computer simulation results.
Index TermsFree-space optics (FSO), gammagamma (G-G)
distribution, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems,
distribution.
I. INTRODUCTION
F
REE-SPACE optics (FSO), has recently received consid-
erable attention and commercial interest as an attractive
solution for high-capacity and cost-effective terrestrial commu-
nications [1]. However, the performance of FSO communica-
tion systems is highly susceptible to adverse atmospheric con-
ditions (e.g. fog), pointing errors and atmospheric turbulence.
Several distributions have been proposed for modeling atmo-
spheric turbulence. Among them, the so-called gammagamma
(G-G) distribution has become the dominant fading model for
FSO links because of its excellent agreement with measurement
data for a wide range of turbulence conditions [2].
The impact of turbulence in FSO systems can be signicantly
reduced by using multiple lasers at the transmitter and multiple
photo-detectors at the receiver [2][4]. The performance of such
multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems has been ad-
dressed in several past works. For example, in [3] the authors in-
vestigated the BER performance of FSO links over log-normal
atmospheric turbulence channels with spatial diversity. In [4],
using a single G-G approximation for the distribution of the
sum of independent G-G variates, the performance of MIMO
FSO systems, operating over strong turbulence channels and
employing Equal Gain Combining (EGC) at the receiver was in-
vestigated. In [2] innite series representations for the error per-
Manuscript received December 14, 2010; revised March 03, 2011; accepted
March 16, 2011. Date of publication April 05, 2011; date of current version June
02, 2011.
The author is with the Laboratory of Mobile Communications, Institute
of Informatics and Telecommunications, National Centre for Scientic Re-
search-Demokritos, Patriarhou Grigoriou and Neapoleos, Agia Paraskevi,
15310 Athens, Greece (e-mail: kpeppas@iit.demokritos.gr).
Digital Object Identier 10.1109/LPT.2011.2135342
formance of MIMO FSO systems and operating over indepen-
dent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) gammagamma fading
channels were proposed.
In this letter, the distribution [5] is used in order to
approximate the sum of arbitrary i.i.d. G-G variates. Based on
this result, simple accurate approximations for the outage prob-
ability (OP) and average bit error probability (ABEP) of MIMO
FSO systems operating over i.i.d. G-G channels and employing
EGC at the receiver are provided. Various numerically evalu-
ated and computer simulation results demonstrate the accuracy
of the proposed analysis.
II. APPROXIMATION TO THE SUM OF G-G VARIATES
Let be a sum of i.i.d. G-G variates. The
pdf of can be expressed as [2, eq. (3)]
(1)
where with denoting expectation, is the
Gamma function [6, eq. (8.310/1)] and is the modied
Bessel function of the second kind and order [6, eq. (8.407/1)].
The parameters and can be selected to achieve a good agree-
ment between and measurement data [2]. Alternatively,
assuming spherical wave propagation, parameters and are
directly related to atmospheric conditions using respectively [1,
eq. (60)] and [1, eq. (61)] as
(2)
and
(3)
In (2) and (3), is the Rytov variance [1, eq. (32)] dened as
[1, p. 363] and ,
where is the distance between transmitter and receiver,
is the optical wave number with being the operational
wavelength, is the aperture diameter of the receiver, and is
the strength of the atmospheric turbulence. The th moment of
dened as can be obtained using
[6, eq. (6.561/16)] as
(4)
1041-1135/$26.00 2011 IEEE
840 IEEE PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGY LETTERS, VOL. 23, NO. 13, JULY 1, 2011
In this contribution, we propose to approximate the pdf
and cumulative distribution function (cdf) of by the
pdf and cdf given in [5]
(5)
(6)
In (5), (6), are the distribution parameters,
is a scale parameter and is the incomplete gamma func-
tion [6, eq. (8.350/2)]. The motivation behind this approxima-
tion is twofold: First, in a recently published work [7] it was
shown that the gamma distribution can be used to approximate
the sum of independent G-G variates. We feel that the use of
a more generic distribution, which includes as special case the
gamma distribution (in the case by setting ), will
result in a more accurate approximation. Second, as it will be-
come evident, the estimation of the parameters of the resulting
pdf requires the knowledge of the rst, the second and
the fourth moment of , which can be easily evaluated given
the moments of . Therefore, the resulting pdf incorporates
information regarding the mean, the variance and the kurtosis
of . In order to render (5) and (6) an accurate approximation,
moment-based estimators for , and are used. These esti-
mators are obtained as [5]
(7)
(8)
(9)
The required moments , and can be eval-
uated using (4) and the multinomial identity as
(10)
where is positive integer. Using Maple, the command lines
given in (11),
(11)
can be utilized to obtain and in a computationally efcient
manner. In this case, , , 2, 4. The parameter
can be nally obtained using (9). To demonstrate the accuracy of
this analysis, Fig. 1 shows the exact and approximate cdfs of the
Fig. 1. Exact and approximate cdf of the sum of and i.i.d G-G
variates.
sum of two and nine i.i.d. G-G variates with for different
values of parameters and . As it can be observed, in all con-
sidered test cases, the proposed approximation is highly accu-
rate and practically indistinguishable from the exact cdf curves.
A comparison of the proposed method with the one proposed
in [7] reveals that our method performs equally well for both
small and large values of . Thus, a correcting factor, similar
to the one introduced in [7] to obtain a sufcient approximation
accuracy, is no longer required. Moreover, in [4, eq. (38)], an ap-
proximate expression for the cdf of in terms of Meijer-Gfunc-
tions [6, eq. (9.301)] is provided. However, since the evaluation
of Meijer-G functions can be sometimes laborious, (6) may be
preferable to [4, eq. (38)] in terms of computational complexity.
Finally, our derived formulas are simpler than those presented
in [2], since the latter are expressed as innite series and require
the computation of convolutional sums.
III. APPLICATION IN MIMO FSO SYSTEMS
We consider a MIMO FSO system where the information
signal is transmitted via apertures and received by aper-
tures. The information bits are modulated using On-Off keying
(OOK) and transmitted through the apertures using repetition
coding [2]. A high-energy FSO system whose performance is
limited by background radiation and thermal noise is assumed.
Under this assumption, the use of the AWGN model as a good
approximation of the Poisson photon counting detection model
is applicable [3]. The received signal at the th receive aperture
is expressed as
(12)
where is the optical-to-electrical conversion coefcient,
represents the information bits and is the AWGN with
zero mean and variance . Furthermore, we assume
that the -s are independent random variables, a fact justied
for link distances of the order of kilometers and for aperture
separation distances of the order of centimeters [2]. The output
of the receiver, assuming that EGC combining is employed, can
be expressed as
(13)
PEPPAS: SIMPLE, ACCURATE APPROXIMATION TO THE SUM OF GAMMAGAMMA VARIATES 841
Fig. 2. Outage probability of MIMO FSO systems employing EGC and oper-
ating over i.i.d gammagamma fading channels as a function of , (
nm, m and ).
where . The received electrical SNR be-
tween the transmit and receive aperture, is dened as [8]
and the corresponding average electrical
SNR as . The electrical SNR of
the combined signal at the output of the receiver is given by
(14)
Next, assuming that follow a G-G distribution with
normalized to unity, important performance evalua-
tion metrics for the considered MIMO system will be obtained.
A. Outage Probability
The OP is dened as the probability that the instantaneous
SNR of the combined signal at the receiver output, falls below
a predened threshold , namely . Using
(14) and (6), a simple, accurate closed form approximation for
the OP is obtained as
(15)
In Fig. 2 the OP of the considered system is plotted as a function
of the inverse normalized outage threshold for km
and km. The parameters and are obtained using (2)
and (3) assuming nm, m and
. Both numerically evaluated and computer simula-
tion results are depicted. From the above mentioned plot, it is
clear that the derived approximative expressions are highly ac-
curate for every considered MIMO deployment and for all con-
sidered link distances.
B. Average Bit Error Probability
Assuming perfect Channel State Information (CSI), the
ABEP of the considered FSO system is given by [3]
(16)
Fig. 3. ABEP of MIMO FSO systems employing EGC and operating over i.i.d
gammagamma fading channels as a function of , ( nm,
m and ).
where is the complementary error function [6, eq.
(8.250/1)]. To evaluate ABEP, the pdf of , , at the
combiner output, will be approximated by the pdf of a single
channel given in (5) where the parameters and are estimated
as functions of and . Having obtained these parameters,
the ABEP is easily obtained by substituting (5) into (16) and
performing symbolic or numerical integration. In Fig. 3 the
ABEP of the considered MIMO system is depicted as a function
of the average electrical SNR, , using the same parameters
considered in the OP case. From the observation of Fig. 3, one
can verify similar ndings to that mentioned in Fig. 2 regarding
the accuracy of the proposed approximation.
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