2017 15th Canadian Workshop on Information Theory (CWIT)

Optimal User Node Placement for Multi-hop FSO

Broadcasting Communications Under Weak
Turbulence Conditions
Jun Yan* , Bingcheng Zhu* , Genfa Zhang* , Julian Cheng†
* College of Telecommunications and Information Engineering
Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications Nanjing, China, 210003
E-mail: yanj@njupt.edu.cn, zbc@njupt.edu.cn, 772517992@qq.com
† School of Engineering, The University of British Columbia Kelowna, BC, Canada.
E-mail: julian.cheng@ubc.ca.

Abstract—Optimal node placement is studied for multi-hop
free-space optical communications where any node can be a
user. The lognormal weak turbulence channel is assumed. First,
the problem of node placement is formulated as a constrained
multi-objective optimization problem. Then, according to the
priority of each user, the multi-objective problem is simplified
to a constrained single-objective problem where the objective
function is the sum of the weighted outage probabilities of all the
users. Iteration is applied to obtain the optimal node placement
solution. More importantly, as a generalization of prior results,
we deduce that the optimal node placement in high signal-to-noise
ratio scenario is irrelevant to the number of users or the priority
of users. Simulation results agree with the proposed analytical
results.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Recently, free-space optical communications (FSO) has
received much attention [1] [2]. It has been widely utilized
for high rate communication between two fixed points over
distances up to several kilometers. Compared with radio fre-
quency (RF) system, it is license-free, fast and secure. Now,
it is appealing for a wide range of applications, such as inter-
building connections, high quality video surveillance and tele-
vision reporting broadcasting. However, weather-dependent
channel loss and atmospheric turbulence fading are two main
factors that limit the link range of FSO systems [3]. Relaying
nodes can be used to mitigate the turbulence-induced fading
and improve the link range [4]. Thus, how to place relaying
nodes in an FSO system becomes an important problem to
solve.
Several recent works have investigated the problem of
optimal FSO relay nodes placement. In [5], the authors showed
that for serial relaying, the minimum outage probability of
an FSO system is achieved only when the relay nodes are
placed equidistant along the direct line from the source to the
destination. In [6], a relay placement scheme was proposed
for multi-hop FSO system with link obstacles and infeasible
regions. In both works, a point-to-point FSO communication
system model was established to assume the destination node
as the only designated user.
In single hop FSO system [7] and RF system [8], multi-
user broadcasting model, which enables all destination nodes
to be users, has been widely utilized. In this paper, we intro-
duce the concept of multi-hop FSO broadcasting for multiple
users. Its system model is described as follows. Besides the
destination node, any relay node can be considered as a user
and receives the same data information from the FSO signal
transmission stream in turn. These users may have different
service requirements that lead different priorities to influence
the optimal node placement solution. Similar to the RF system,
all users receive the same information at all nodes almost
simultaneously. The above system has wider application than
existing cable network [9]. For example, in video conference,
the video and voice stream can be transmitted using this multi-
hop FSO broadcasting technique. At each node, contents can
be off-loaded and distributed to different local users. Thus,
it is of practical importance to study the node placement
for the above multi-hop FSO broadcasting system. In [10],
a relay node placement scheme based on the iteration was
proposed for multi-hop FSO broadcasting for multiple users
with a constrained optimization model. The objective function
in the preliminary work was based on the approximate outage
probability of each user. Simulation results under different
constraints and feasible regions were given. However, it did
not reveal any insights into this optimization problem.
In this paper, we study the problem of optimal node
placement on a two-dimensional plane under a broadcasting
scenario with multiple users. The contributions are summa-
rized as follows. First, an algorithm is proposed to solve
the problem of multi-user node placement with different
priorities. The problem is first formulated as a constrained
multi-objective optimization problem, then it is simplified to
a practical constrained single objective optimization problem.
The single objective function is the weighted sum of the outage
probabilities of all the users. Second, a useful theorem is
proposed to reveal insights into the optimal node locations
in the weak turbulence condition. Specifically, we reveal that
when the transmission power is sufficiently large, the number
of users and their weight parameters are irrelevant to the
result of optimal node placement. In other words, equal-distant
node placement is always the optimal node placement scheme
regardless the priorities of the nodes. Numerical results are
shown to verify the analytical result.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Sec-
tion II describes a multi-hop FSO broadcasting model. The
proposed optimization framework for user node placement

978-1-5090-6026-9/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE

 2017 15th Canadian Workshop on Information Theory (CWIT)

where kw and Cn2 are, respectively, the optical wave number

      and the refractive index structure constant.






 "" 



 
In the proposed channel model, the signal-independent

Gaussian white noise with one-sided power density N0 is
 added after the photo-electric detector. The electrical signal-

to-noise ratio (SNR) of the kth link is γk = (RTb P hk )2 /N0 ,
Fig. 1. FSO relay system under multi-user condition where P , R, Tb and hk are respectively the transmit power, the
responsibility of the photodetector, the duration of the signal
and the non-signal slots for BPPM and the channel gain of
is presented in detail in Section III. A useful theorem to the kth link [6].
reveal some important insights into the problem of optimal
node placements is described in Section IV. Simulation results C. Outage Probability for FSO Relaying
are reported in Section V. Finally, Section VI draws our
The exact outage probability of node k can be defined as
conclusion.
[6]
II. M ULTI - HOP FSO BROADCASTING MODEL 
k
Pout,k = 1 − (1 − Pr (γj < γth ))
A. Transmission Model
j=1
An intensity-modulation direct-detection multi-hop FSO k 

decode-and-forward (DF) system is considered. In Fig. 1, the ln(L(dj )PM /(K + 1)) + 2μj
=1− 1 − Q( )
source transmits binary pulse position modulation (BPPM) j=1
2σj
signal to the first in-between node1 . The receiving node detects (4)
the signal, regenerates it and retransmits it to the next node.
This process continues until the source data arrives at the where γth is the electrical threshold SNR. Q(·) is the Gaussian
destination [5]. In this model, some in-between nodes in the Q-function defined as

∞
multi-hop network may also be the users. We assume that 1
the number of in-between nodes is K. The source node and Q(x) = √ exp( − u2 /2)du. (5)
2π x
the destination node are denoted by node 0 and node K + 1,
respectively. The distance of the ith link between the node In (4), PM is the power margin given by

i − 1 and node i is described as di . Pt2 R2 Tb2
PM = (6)
N0 γth
B. Channel Model
where Pt is the total transmitted power.
The channel intensity gain of the kth link with distance dk
can be expressed as [2]
III. O PTIMIZATION FRAMEWORK
hk = αk2 L(dk ) (1) Suppose there are K in-between nodes to be placed, where
where αk is the fading amplitude of the kth link; L(dk ) = the destination node and the K in-between nodes are the
l(dk )/l(dSD ) is the normalized path loss where dSD is the users. Our goal is to minimize the outage probability of each
distance between the source and the destination and l(dk ) = node, i.e. to solve the following multi-objective optimization
AT X ARX e−σdk (λdk )−2 and where σ, AT X , ARX and λ are, problem
respectively, the visibility-dependent attenuation coefficient, ⎧
⎪ min Pout,1
the transmitter aperture area, the receiver aperture area and ⎪
⎪ d1
⎪
⎪
the optical wavelength. ⎨ ..
.
In this paper, the lognormal fading model is used to model ⎪ min Pout,K
⎪
⎪
the weak turbulence channel [5]. The fading amplitude can be ⎪
⎪
d1 ···dK
(7)
⎩ min Pout,K+1
represented as αk = exp(χk ) where χk is normal distributed d1 ···dK+1
with mean μk and variance σk2 . To normalize the fading am-

K+1
plitude, we make E[αk2 ] = 1, where E[·] denotes expectation, s.t. dk = dSD
so that μk = −σk2 . The probability density function of αk can k=1
be given by
  where Pout,K+1 is the outage probability of the destination.
1 (ln(αk ) + σk2 )2 According to the priorities of the the users, the weight vector
p(αk ) =  exp − . (2)
αk 2πσk2 2σk2 w can be defined as
T
Based on the Rytov theory, the lognormal parameter σk2 can w = [w1 , w2 , · · · , wK+1 ] , (8)
be calculated from [11] 
K+1
 
11/6 wk = 1, wk ≥ 0 (9)
σk2 = min 0.124kw7/6 Cn2 dk , 0.5 (3)
k=1

1 An in-between node is defined as the node to be placed between the source where wk represents the weight of the kth node. Note that if
node and the destination node. the kth node is not a user, wk = 0.
 2017 15th Canadian Workshop on Information Theory (CWIT)

The multi-objective optimization problem in (7) can be 0

10
simplified to a practical single objective optimization problem
by the linear weight parameter method [12], and the objective
function can be expressed as

−1
K+1 10

Outage Probability
min wk Pout,k . (10)
d1 ,··· ,dK+1
k=1

If no in-between node is considered as the user, eq. (10) −2

10
specializes to min Pout,K+1 and it was proved to be
d1 ···dK+1 Exact (relay at[3,0])

minimized when d1 = d2 = · · · = dK+1 [5].

Approximate(relay at[3,0])
Exact (relay at[4,0])
Approximate (relay at[4,0])
−3
10
2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
IV. O BSERVATIONS ON THE OPTIMIZATION FRAMEWORK PM (dB)

In this section, we introduce a useful theorem to reveal

Fig. 2. The comparison between the approximated objective function and the
some important insights into the problem of optimal node exact objective function. The positions of the source and destination node are
placements in weak turbulence condition. (0, 0),(10, 0)(in km) respectively,λ = 1550nm,Cn 2 = 5 × 10−14 m−2/3 and

Theorem: For the objective function in (10), when the des- σ = 0.1km−1 , w1 = 0.5, w2 = 0.5.
tination weight wK+1 is non-zero and PM → ∞, the optimal
node placement scheme is to place the nodes equidistantly
along the path from the source node to the destination node According to (3), the lognormal channel parameter σi2 is an
regardless of the values of the weights wk (k = 1, · · · , K + 1) increasing function of the link distances di . If di < dj ,we can
and the number of users. obtain σi2 < σj2 , and then obtain
Proof: Substituting (4) into (10), the objective function can Q(H(di ))
be expressed as lim = 0. (14)
PM →∞ Q(H(dj ))

K+1 
k
According to (14), eq. (12) can be approximated as
FΣ = wk [1 − (1 − Q(H(dj )))] (11)
k=1 j=1 
K+1
FΣ ≈ wk Q(H(dmax,k )) (15)
ln(L(dj )PM /(K+1))+2μj
where H(dj ) = 2σj . k=1

When PM → ∞, the cross terms of the Q-function will when PM → ∞, where dmax,k is the distance of the longest
become negligible compared to the other terms. Therefore, by hop before node k. According to (14), if dmax,j > dmax,i , we
ignoring the higher order items, we obtain obtain
Q(H(dmax,i ))

K+1 lim = 0, j > i. (16)
PM →∞ Q(H(dmax,j ))
FΣ = wk
k=1 Therefore, eq. (15) can be further simplified to
× [1 − (1 − Q(H(d1 ))) × · · · × (1 − Q(H(dk )))] (12)

K+1

K+1 
k FΣ ≈ wk Q(H(dkmax )) (17)
≈ wk Q(H(dj )). k=kmax
k=1 j=1

K+1
In order to verify the accuracy of the approximation of where kmax is the index of the longest hop. Since wk
k=kmax
(12), taking one relay node as an example, Fig. 2 describes is a constant, the minimizer for (17) is also the minimizer for
the exact and approximated objective function when the node Q(H(dkmax )).
at different positions. It can be found that the approximated As the Q-function is a monotonically decreasing function,
objective function is close to the exact objective function. dkmax should be minimized in order to minimize the asymp-
Thus, the approximation of the objective function has little totic weighted outage probability in (17).
effect on the performance analysis. Since dkmax is the longest hop distance among all hops, we
When PM → ∞, similar to the discussion in [13], it can have ⎧
be seen that ⎪ dkmax ≥ d1
⎪
⎪
⎨ dkmax ≥ d2
Q(H(di ))
lim .. (18)
PM →∞Q(H(dj )) ⎪
⎪ .
  ⎪
⎩
∂Q ln(L(di )PM2σ /(K+1))+2μi
/∂PM dkmax ≥ dK+1 .
i
= lim   (13) Taking a summation of (18), we obtain
PM →∞ ln(L(dj )PM /(K+1))+2μj
∂Q 2σj /∂PM
1 1 σj 
K+1

= lim exp(( 2 − 2 )(ln PM )2 ) . (K + 1)dkmax ≥ di = dSD

PM →∞ 8σj 8σi σi i=1
 2017 15th Canadian Workshop on Information Theory (CWIT)

TABLE I
THE DISTANCE OF EACH HOP FOR LOGNORMAL FADING MODEL 1

PM (dB) d1 (km) d2 (km) d3 (km) d4 (km) d5 (km) 0.8

−3 1.6437 1.6437 1.6437 1.6437 3.4251 0.6

−1 1.8110 1.8110 1.8110 1.8110 2.7562
1 1.9888 1.9888 1.9888 1.9888 2.0446 0.4
10 1.9985 1.9985 1.9985 1.9985 2.0061
0.2

km
0

or
dSD −0.2
dkmax ≥ (19)
K +1 −0.4 Source node
destination node
which implies that dkmax = dSD
is the smallest value of
K+1
−0.6 Optimal relay locations (SNR=−3dB)
Optimal relay locations (SNR=−1dB)
dkmax that is possible. Furthermore, by substituting d1 = −0.8 Optimal relay locations (SNR=1dB)

d2 = · · · = dK+1 = K+1 dSD Optimal relay locations (SNR=10dB)

into the constraint function
−1

K+1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

di = dSD , we conclude that the value dkmax = K+1 dSD km

i=1
can be achieved when d1 = d2 = · · · = dK+1 = K+1
dSD
. Fig. 3. Optimal in-between node locations for lognormal fading model. w4 =
Therefore, the weighted outage probability is 0.6, w5 = 0.4, w1 = w2 = w3 = 0.
minimized when the nodes are placed with equal
distance along the source to the destination regardless TABLE II
the weight values and the number of nodes. O PTIMAL IN - BETWEEN NODE POSITION FOR LOGNORMAL FADING MODEL

Weight parameter In-between node position (km)

Destination node 1 2 3 4
V. S IMULATION RESULTS 0.6 0.4 (1.999,0) (3.997,0) (5.996,0) (7.994,0)
0.5 0.5 (1.998,0) (3.996,0) (5.993,0) (7.991,0)
In the simulation, the coordinates of the source is (0, 0), 1 0 (2,0) (4,0) (6,0) (8,0)
and that of the destination is (10, 0), both in kilometer. Four
nodes are to be placed. The optical wavelength is λ = 1550nm.
The parameters are assumed to be Cn2 = 5 × 10−14 m−2/3 and C. An Intuitive Explanation of the Theorem
σ = 0.1km−1 . In this paper, the function “fmincon” in Matlab
is utilized to solve the optimal in-between node placement Taking PM = 20dB and only one relay node, Fig.
problem. 4 describes the sum of the outage probabilities of users
Pout,1 + Pout,2 when the node located at different position
A. Influence of PM on the Optimal Node Locations from the source to destination node. It can be found that
when the outage probability of users is minimum, the relay
We take the destination node and the fourth in-between node node should be placed at the middle point of the direct line
as the user, and their weight parameters are w1 = w2 = between the source and destination node. Thus, this simulation
w3 = 0, w4 = 0.4 and w5 = 0.6 respectively. In Fig. 3 result verifies the proposed theorem that for FSO broadcasting
and Table I, we vary the transmit power and investigate how model, equal-distance placement for the relay nodes is also the
it influences the optimal in-between node location over the optimal solution. Figure 5 compares the outage probabilities of
lognormal fading channel, where the objective function is the the destination Pout,2 and the sum of the outage probabilities
exact end-to-end outage probability in (4). We observe that
when PM is increased to 1dB, the optimal node intervals
are almost equal from the source node to the destination
node. However, when PM is not sufficient larger (−3dB), the
distances of the hops are different. Therefore, these simulation
results agree with the prediction by the theorem that equal-
distant placement is the optimal solution under sufficiently −2
10
large SNR, when the objective function is the weighted outage
Outage Probability

probability.

B. Influence of Weights on the Optimal Node Locations

Taking the destination node and the fourth node as the users,
Table II illustrates the optimal in-between node positions when
PM = 10dB. By comparing the simulation results with weight Pout +Pout
1 2

parameters (0.6, 0.4), (0.5, 0.5) and (1, 0), it can be observed 10
−3

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
that the weight parameters have little significant influence on d (km)
1

the optimal in-between node locations, and this is because the

transmit power PM = 10dB is already sufficiently large. This Fig. 4. Outage probability for lognormal fading model, when the relay node
result again verifies the proposed theorem. is placed at different positions.
 2017 15th Canadian Workshop on Information Theory (CWIT)

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0
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P
from (4). Since lim Pout,1 out,2
= 0, the outage probability of
PM →∞
the in-between node is infinitesimal compared with that of the
destination.

VI. C ONCLUSION
We developed an optimization framework to the node place-
ment problem in multi-hop FSO broadcasting system under
the weak turbulence condition. First, the problem of node
placement was formulated as a theoretical constrained multi-
objective optimization problem. Then based on the priority
of each user, the theoretical model was transformed into a
practical single constrained objective optimization model by
the linear weight parameter method. A useful theorem is
presented to reveal insights into the optimal node locations for
weak turbulence condition under sufficient larger transmitted
power. Simulation results comply with the proposed theorem
that both the user number and the weight parameter have little
influence on the optimal node placement.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The work was supported by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China (No. 61302103, 61372122, 61372123)
and the Research Center of Optical Communications Engi-
neering & Technology Jiangsu Province (ZSF0101).

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