International Journal of Electrical & Computer Sciences IJECS-IJENS Vol: 11 No: 02 1

Channel Capacity of MIMO FSO System under Strong Turbulent

Condition

Bobby Barua#1 and Dalia Barua#2

#1
Assistant Professor, Department of EEE, Ahsanullah University of Science and Technology, Dhaka, Bangladesh
#2
M.Sc. Student, Institute of ICT, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Dhaka, Bangladesh
bobby@aust.edu

Abstract— Free Space Optics (FSO) or optical wireless
communication is a promising solution for the need to very
high data rate point-to-point communication. In FSO
communication links, atmospheric turbulence causes
fluctuations in both the intensity and the phase of the received
light signal, impairing link performance. This intensity
fluctuation, also known as scintillation is one of the most
important factors that degrade the performance of an FSO
communication link even under the clear sky condition. This
paper investigates the use of multiple lasers and multiple
apertures to mitigate the effects of scintillation. Also an
analytical approach is presented to evaluate the channel
capacity of a free space optical link using Q-ary optical PPM
under strong atmospheric turbulent condition. In this view,
we propose design rules for optimal channel capacity of the
system.
Index Terms—Free space optics (FSO), pulse position
modulation (PPM), probability of density function (PDF),
channel capacity,
I. INTRODUCTION
Free Space Optical (FSO) communication is a
telecommunication technology that uses light propagating
in free space to transmit data between two points. FSO
communication links have some distinct advantages over
conventional microwave and optical fiber communication
systems by virtue of their high carrier frequencies that
permit large capacity, enhanced security, high data rate and
so on. Such links are suitable for 1–2 Gb/s rates over
distances in the range of 1–5 km. However, a number of
limitations due to atmospheric turbulence make it difficult
to achieve the desired level of performance [1, 2].
Atmospheric turbulence-induced fading is one of the main
impairments affecting FSO communications.Optical signal
propagation in free space is affected by atmospheric
turbulence and pointing errors, which fade the signal at the
receiver and deteriorate the link performance. The
reliability of an FSO communication system is greatly
influenced by the atmospheric conditions. The beam
scattering caused by fog and haze can significantly reduced
the received optical signal level. Again heavy fog causes
attenuation greater than 300 dB/km, thus limits the link
length to < 100m. Rain and snow affect mainly the radio
and microwave frequencies but their effects are not
deleterious for FSO systems. However FSO can encounter
significant losses in a clear sky condition due to
inhomogeneities in temperature and pressure [3, 4]. So the
scintillation severely limits the reliability of FSO links as it
deteriorates the signal intensity at the receiver and can
even result in complete loss of communication links. The
effect of scintillation is more severe for small aperture
receivers [5,6]. Several communication techniques to
mitigate turbulence-induced intensity fluctuations. These
techniques are applicable in the regime in which the
receiver aperture is smaller than the correlation length of
the fading, and the observation interval is shorter than the
correlation time of the fading. To enable the transmission
under strong the atmospheric turbulence the use of the
multi-laser multi-detector (MLMD) concept has been
reported in Ref. [7,8]. Specifically, we envision separate
lasers, assumed to be intensity-modulated only, together
with photodetectors (PDs), assumed to be ideal
noncoherent (direct-detection) receivers. The sources and
detectors are physically situated so that the fading
experienced between source–detector pairs is statistically
independent, and thus, diversity benefits can accrue from
the multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channel [9].
Channel capacity is the maximum achievable data rate that
can be reliably communicated between the transmitter and
the receiver [10]. In this paper, we develop an analytical
approach to evaluate the channel capacity under strong
turbulence with Q-ary PPM. The developed scheme allows
aggregation of RF/microwave signals and a conversion to
the optical domain in a very natural way and may be a
good candidate for hybrid RF/microwave-FSO systems.
The symbol error probability (SEP) are evaluated with
fading in the presence of background radiation. In the
determination of SEP it is also assumed that p.i.n.
photodiodes are used, and the channel is modeled using
Gamma-Gamma distribution for strong turbulence. To
determine the channel capacity we employed the concept
proposed by Fang Xu in [11], although in a different
context (for multi amplitude/multi phase signaling).

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 International Journal of Electrical & Computer Sciences IJECS-IJENS Vol: 11 No: 02 2

Fig. 1. Atmospheric optical MIMO system with Q-ary PPM

II. SYSTEM MODEL

The aggregate optical field is detected by each PD,
assuming an ideal photon counting model with typical
Fig. 1 depicts a block diagram of the physical system
quantum efficiency. Also a single-channel link analysis is
under study. M laser sources, all pointed toward a distant
included to suggest typical link parameters. Though the
array of N PDs, are intensity-modulated by an information
transmission rate is rather flexible, we have in mind
source The laser beam-widths are narrow, but sufficiently
systems sending in the range of 100 Mb/s. Here we
wide to illuminate the entire PD array. For example, if the
consider the chosen parameters rate 100 Mb/s, the
half-power beam-width is 10 mrads, the half-power spot
expected number of detected photoelectrons per slot is on
size at distance 1 km has diameter 10 m. The MN optical
the order of 300 in either binary or quaternary PPM.
path pairs may experience fading, and we designate Anm as
Though this is more than adequate for the desired
the amplitude of the path gain (field strength multiplier)
performance with the ideal photon-counting model, fading
from m source to detector. A Q-ary PPM scheme transmits
and other parameter choices could make this number much
L=log2Q bits per symbol, providing high power efficiency.
smaller.
The total transmitted power Ptot is fixed and independent of
the number of lasers so that emitted power per laser is
Ptot/M. This technique improves the tolerance to
atmospheric turbulence, because different Q-ary PPM III. CHANNEL MODELING
symbols experience different atmospheric turbulence
conditions. At the receiver the received signal r(t) after
optical/electrical conversion is:
To characterize the FSO channel from a communication
theory perspective, it is useful to give a statistical
representation of the scintillation. The reliability of the
r (t )   h(t ) I 0  n(t ) (1) communication link can be determined if we use a good
probabilistic model for the turbulence. Several probability
density functions (PDFs) have been proposed for the
where I0 is the average transmitted light intensity , I is the intensity variations at the receiver of an optical link. Al-
corresponding received intensity in an ON PPM slot, Habash et al. [7] proposed a statistical model that
h is the channel fading coefficient and n is the receiver factorizes the irradiance as the product of two independent
noise.

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 International Journal of Electrical & Computer Sciences IJECS-IJENS Vol: 11 No: 02 3

random processes each with a Gamma PDF. The PDF of To extend the analysis of non-fading link and no
the intensity fluctuation is given by [7] background radiation case to the case of link fading, we
can simply average the (conditional) symbol error
probability of (17), with respect to the joint fading
2()()/2 (2)1 distribution of the Anm variables. We emphasize that this
f (I)  I K() (2  I), I  0 (2) produces the symbol error probability averaged over fades.
()() Formally, we find Ps by evaluating

I is the signal intensity, Г(.) is the gamma function, and

PS   Ps| A f A (a )da (7)
K   is the modified Bessel function of the second kind
and order  .  and  are PDF parameters
describing the scintillation experienced by plane waves,
and in the case of zero-inner scale are given by [9] where the integral is interpreted as an MN-dimensional
integral. Since the Anm variables are assumed independent,
the above averaging leads to
1 (3)
 
 0.49 R2 
exp  12 /5 7 / 6 
1
 (1  1.11 R ) 
 w w i 
MN
w wi   s (il )a2  (8)
Ps  (1)l    t(Q, w, i)   e M f A (a)da 
 
i  i  
0

i1 l 0

1
  (4)
 0.51 R2 
exp  12 / 5 5/ 6 
1
 (1  0.69 R )  If the channel is under log-normal fading, the probability
of zero count in slot 1 at detector n is given by [1],

  P  T 
m1n1anm2  Mhfr  Qs 
M n

P  allZn1  0 | slot1, A  e (9)
where σR2 is the Rytov variance given by[4]

If the path gains are independently distributed and

σR2 =1.23C2n k7/6L11/6 (5) identical, the average symbol error is given by [4],

M
 a2 EMs   
N

Q 1   

k = 2/( is the optical wave number, L is propagation hf

distance, and Cn2 is the refractive index structure Ps   Ps|A f A (a)da   e f A (a)da  (10)
parameter, which we assume to be constant for horizontal Q   
paths.   

In case of gamma-gamma fading, the probability of zero

IV. THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF ERROR PROBABILITY count in slot 1 at detector n is

  P  T 
m1n1anm2  Mhfr  Qs 
M n


First, we assume the channel gain of every laser-detector P allZn1  0| slot1, A  e (11)
pair is fixed over a symbol duration. Letting amn denote the
amplitude fading on the path from laser m to photodetector
n, we define the channel gain matrix as A with element If the path gains are independently distributed and
[anm, n =1,……,N, m = 1, ……M]. The probability of identical, the average symbol error becomes
symbol error conditioned on the fading variables is
M
  a2  EMs   
N

 w  w  i  Q  1    

w wi s
  anm2 (i l )
hf

Ps| A   (1)l     t (Q, w, i)e M n m (6) Ps   Ps| A f ( I )dI    e f ( I )dI   (12)

i 1 l 0  i   i  Q   
   

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 International Journal of Electrical & Computer Sciences IJECS-IJENS Vol: 11 No: 02 4

V. CHANNEL CAPACITY The simulations are performed using matlab, the influence
of scintillation is modeled assuming Gamma-Gamma
distribution, and an ideal photon counting receiver is
We consider in this paper the case of terrestrial multiple- employed.
input multiple-output (MIMO) channel with FSO systems used
over ranges up to several kilometers. In such systems, 0.9
photon counting is not feasible in practice. In fact, the S.I=3.0
received photon flux is important and we can detect the 0.8
received signal based on the beam intensity directly. Here,
we consider the channel capacity for different value of Q 0.7
for intensity-based signal detection. The channel capacity
is the maximum of the mutual information I(X; Y) 0.6
between the channel input X and output Y, with respect to
the probability mass function of X: 0.5

f(I)
0.4
C  max I  X ; Y  (13)
PX ( x )
0.3

We assume equiprobable symbols for PPM. Without loss

0.2
of generality, let us assume that the first slot is ON and the
others are OFF. We denote this symbol by x1 and M and N
0.1
are no. of transmitter and receiver respectively. In addition,
let us denote by xk a PPM symbol with the kth slot ON.
Then the channel capacity 0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4
Value of (I)
MN
   
  fY | X  y | x1    Fig2: Probability of Distribution Function for Gamma-
C    fY | X  y | x1  log2   dy  (14)
Gamma.
 RQ  1 Q f y|x  
  Q k 1 Y | X k 
   The plot of the probability density function in Fig. 2 for
gamma gamma cases with typical value of scintillation
index (S.I) and turbulence strength.

VI. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

0
fading varying with M and N
10

Following the analytical approach presented in section IV

and V we evaluate the symbol error probability result and
-2
10

estimate the channel capacity of a MIMO FSO link with

Q-ary PPM and direct detection scheme under strong
turbulence conditions. For the convenience of the readers 10
-4

the parameters used for computation in this paper are

shown in table 1.
-6
Ps

10
Table1: System Parameters used for computation

Parameter Name Value 10

-8

Bit Rate, Br 100 Mbps

Modulation Q-PPM
Order of PPM, Q 2, 4, 8, …………….. 10
-10
MIMO,M=1,N=1
Channel Type Gamma-gamma MIMO,M=2,N=2
MIMO,M=4,N=4
Scintillation Index, S.I. 3.0 MIMO,M=8,N=8
Symbol energy with -170dBJ 10
-12

-200 -195 -190 -185 -180 -175 -170 -165 -160

background noise Esdb

Rytov Variance,  x 0.1-0.8

Fig.3 :SEP with varying both M and N, for gamma-gamma
Symbol Energy, Es 10-16 Joules fading with S.I. =3. Q= 2 and no background noise.
Quantum efficiency, η 0.5

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 International Journal of Electrical & Computer Sciences IJECS-IJENS Vol: 11 No: 02 5

that p.i.n. photodetectors are employed, and evaluate how

much we can approach this theoretical limit employing
different value of Q. We discussed the impact of bit-
symbol mapping on the channel capacity as well as on the
performance of the receiver. The analysis shows the
beneficial effects from a diversity standpoint of multiple
sources and detectors, and transmit diversity is achieved
here without additional special coding.

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[3] N. Cvijetic, S.G. Wilson, and Brandt- Pearce M.,

Fig.4:SEP Channel capacity for different number of lasers
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(M), photodetectors (N) and number of slots (Q) in strong MIMO Channels with APDs and Q-ary PPM,”IEEE
turbulence regime (σR=3.0). photon tehnol.Lett.18, 1491-1493 (2006)

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shown in Fig. 3 for several combinations of transmitter and
receiver under faded condition. The symbol energy due to
background light is set to -170 dBJ for system. It is found
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performance also noticed that, SEP improves as the
numbers of lasers and photodetectors are increased and in
the presence of background light the SEP decreases as the
order of the Q-ary PPM scheme increases. Fig.4 shows the
channel capacity for different combination of transmitter
and receiver. Here we evaluate the channel capacity for the
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channel. That is to say, we consider the presence of
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the number of transmitter and receiver with proper
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We have analyzed an optical MIMO system employing

QPPM across sources with direct detection Gamma
gamma model for strong turbulent condition. We
determine the channel capacity of this scheme assuming

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