Outage Analysis of an Inter-relay Assisted

Free Space Optical Communication

System

Himanshu Khanna, Mona Aggarwal and Swaran Ahuja

Abstract In this work, we analyze the outage performance of a one way inter-relay
assisted free space optical link. We assume the absence of direct link or line of sight
path between the source and destination nodes. The analytical closed form
expressions for the outage probability have been derived and are illustrated by
numerical plots. We attempt to show that the absence of line of sight path between
the source and the destination doesn’t lead to significant performance degradation.
Moreover, we conclude that inter-relaying not only provides an additional degree of
freedom, but can also further help to increase the distance for transmission between
the source and the destination nodes, while keeping the total transmitted power
within permissible levels.

1 Introduction

The free space optical communication (FSO) has emerged as one of the key
research areas because of its several potential benefits such as higher bandwidth,
cost effective, secure and flexible solutions for the last mile problems [1]. However,
the performance of FSO systems is affected significantly by the path losses,
atmospheric conditions between transmitter and receiver, and pointing errors. In
order to mitigate the turbulence induced fading, relay assisted communication is
employed in FSO systems [2]. The relay assisted FSO system can be implemented
as a multi-hop serial relaying or a parallel relaying system [2, 3]. Moreover, the
relaying can either be active in which all relays cooperatively listen and transmit
[4], or it can be selective where a subset of relays is selected from the available
relays based on the state of FSO network [5, 6].
If relays are inter-connected in FSO systems, they increase the diversity order
and enhance the performance of FSO networks [7, 8]. However, the system models
presented in the literature consider a direct link between source and destination

H. Khanna (&)
M. Aggarwal
S. Ahuja

Department of EECE, The NorthCap University, Gurgaon, Haryana, India
e-mail: khanna.h@rediffmail.com

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2017 301

I. Bhattacharya et al. (eds.), Advances in Optical Science and Engineering,
Springer Proceedings in Physics 194, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-3908-9_37
302 H. Khanna et al.

nodes, which in a practical scenario may not be feasible for long distances. We
investigate the outage performance of the system and derive closed form expression
for the outage probability. We also analyze the outage performance of the system
under consideration, in the absence of pointing errors, and compare the same with
non-interconnected (NIR) and dual-hop serial relaying techniques, in the presence
and absence of channel state information (CSI), which is illustrated by numerical
plots.
Rest of the paper is organized as follows: In Sect. 2, the system model is
presented. In Sect. 3, we derive analytical expressions for outage probability, for
the system model under consideration. The numerical plots and conclusions are
given in Sects. 4 and 5, respectively.

2 System Model

We consider a binary pulse position (PPM), intensity modulated FSO communi-

cation system that employs a direct detection scheme. The source (S) transmits data
to destination (D) with the help of two relays (R1, R2), as shown in Fig. 1. We
assume all channels to experience independent but not necessarily identically dis-
tributed (i.n.i.d.) fading. The transmission of data is in the half duplex mode. The
decode and forward (DF) relaying protocol employed here, decodes the incoming
signal at the relay and re-transmits the decoded version of signal on correct
reception of cyclic redundancy check (CRC) bits, to the destination node. The
channel coefficients hxy for {xy} ∊ {SR1, SR2, R12, R1D, R2D}, where SRi is the link
between S and relay i, R12 is the link between R1 and R2, and RiD is the link between
relay i and D, for i ∊ {1, 2}, are modeled taking into consideration the effect of
atmospheric turbulence, path losses, and pointing error impairments. The atmo-
spheric turbulence is characterized by gamma-gamma fading statistics with its
probability density function (pdf) given by [9]. The atmospheric path loss is
modeled using the exponential Beers-Lambert Law, and is given as hl = exp(−rL),
where r is the attenuation coefficient, and L is the link length in m. Further, the
pointing error losses are considered to be Rayleigh distributed and given as [10].
The pdf of the channel hxy, considering the influence of all the three channel
impairments discussed above is given by [10, (20)]. The pdf fcxy ðcÞ of the instan-
taneous SNR, ϒxy, can then be derived as [10].

Fig. 1 Two relay FSO

communication system with a
unidirectional interconnected
relay link
Outage Analysis of an Inter-relay Assisted … 303

3 Outage Analysis

3.1 Outage Analysis for Inter-connected Relaying FSO

System in the Absence of CSI, but with Considerable
Pointing Error Impairments

Firstly, we consider a case that the pointing errors are present and the CSI is not
available at relay and destination nodes. Further, an all active relaying strategy is
considered for the analysis. We define cth as the threshold value for the SNR, post
reception and decoding. If the instantaneous SNR, c, over any link falls below cth,
then that link is said to be in outage. We now define outage events corresponding to
four cases for the given system model described earlier in this section as follows.
Case—1: When both relays R1 and R2 decode correctly, i.e. cR1 [ cth and
cR2 [ cth , the outage event is

PðcR1D \cth ÞPðcR2D \cth Þ

Case—2: When R1 decodes correctly but R2 does not, i.e cR1 [ cth and cR2 [ cth ,
the outage event is

PðcR12 \cth ÞPðcSR2 \cth ÞPðcR1D \cth Þ

Case—3: When R2 decodes correctly but R1 does not, i.e. cR2 [ cth and
cR1 [ cth , the outage event is

PðcSR1 \cth ÞPðcR2D \cth Þ

Case—4: When both relays R1 and R2 don’t decode correctly, i.e. cR1 [ cth and
cR2 [ cth , the outage event is

PðcSR1 \cth ÞPðcSR2 \cth Þ:

Assuming all the links to be statistically independent, the overall outage prob-
ability for these four disjoint cases can be written as


Pout ¼ PðcSR1 [ cth ÞPðcR1D \cth ÞPðcR2D \cth Þ PðcSR1 [ cth PðcR12 [ cth Þ þ PðcSR2 [ cth Þ
þ PðcSR1 [ cth ÞPðcSR2 \cth ÞPðcR12 \cth ÞPðcR1D \cth Þ
þ PðcSR1 \cth ÞPðcSR2 [ cth ÞPðcR2D \cth Þ þ PðcSR1 \cth ÞPðcSR2 \cth Þ;
ð1Þ

where the probability of outage for a given link, xy, can be written as
304 H. Khanna et al.

cZth
Pðcxy  cth Þ ¼ fcxy ðcÞdc;
0

and is given as [11]

Fcxy ðcth Þ ¼ Pðcxy  cth Þ;

rffiffiffiffiffiffiffi  !
n2xy cth  1; n2xy þ 1 ð2Þ
Fcxy ðcth Þ ¼ G3;1 axy bxy 
Cðaxy ÞCðbxy Þ 2;4 Xxy  n2 ; a ; b ; 0 ;
xy xy xy

where Fcxy ðcth Þ is the cumulative distribution function (CDF) of a single link xy,
Gp,q is Meijer’s G-function, axy and bxy are the atmospheric turbulence parameters,
nxy is the pointing error parameter, and Ωxy denotes the average electrical SNR
for link xy and is defined as Ωxy = (ηE[hxy])2/No with E denoting the expecta- 
tion operator. Moreover, it may be further noted that P cxy [ cth ¼
 
1  P cxy  cth ¼ 1  Fcxy ðcth Þ. Therefore, the outage probability, Pout, can be
re-written as

Pout ¼ ð1  FcSR1 ðcth ÞÞFcR1D ðcth ÞFcR2D ðcth Þ½ð1  FcSR1 ðcth ÞÞð1  FcR12 ðcth ÞÞ
þ ð1  FcSR2 ðcth ÞÞ þ ð1  FcSR1 ðcth ÞÞFcSR2 ðcth ÞFcR12 ðcth ÞFcR1D ðcth Þ ð3Þ
þ FcSR1 ðcth Þð1  FcSR2 ðcth ÞÞFcR2D ðcth Þ þ FcSR1 ðcth ÞFcSR2 ðcth Þ:

By substituting Fcxy ðcth Þ in (3), the closed form expression for outage probability
can then be obtained in terms of Meijer’s G-function.

3.2 Outage Performance for a Non-interconnected

Relaying FSO System with No Pointing Errors

For no or negligible pointing error impairments, the outage probability of the link
xy, defined in terms of cdf of the gamma-gamma distribution, is given as [5]
 !
axy bxy N 
ðNÞ 1  1
pxy ¼ Pðcxy  cth Þ ¼ G2;1  ; ð4Þ
Cðaxy ÞCðbxy Þ 1;3 Gxy PM  axy ; bxy ; 0

where Gxy is the gain of the link xy and given as [2], PM is the power margin given
as PM ¼ pRTffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
b Pt ffi
, with R being the responsivity of the photodetector, Tb is the bit
No cth
duration, Pt is the total transmitted power, N is the number of active links, and No is
the AWGN.
Outage Analysis of an Inter-relay Assisted … 305

3.2.1 When CSI Is Available

When CSI is available at relay and destination nodes, selective relaying protocols
can be employed for transmitting data along the unique strongest path [5, 6, 8]. In
this case, the outage probability of an NIR-FSO system is given as [8]

ðNÞ ðNÞ
Pout ¼ pSR1 D  pSR2 D
ðNÞ ðNÞ ðNÞ ðNÞ ðNÞ ðNÞ ðNÞ ðNÞ
ð5Þ
¼ ðpSR1 þ pR1D  pSR1 pR1D ÞðpSR2 þ pR2D  pSR2 pR2D Þ;

ðNÞ ðNÞ
where pSR1 D and pSR2 D are the outage probabilities for paths S-R1-D and S-R2-D,
ðNÞ ðNÞ
respectively, pSR1 and pSR2 are the outage probabilities for S to R1 and S to R2 links,
ðNÞ ðNÞ
pR1D and pR2D are the outage probabilities for R1 to D and R2 to D links, respectively,
and are defined by (4).

3.3 Outage Performance of Inter-connected Relaying FSO

System with No Pointing Errors

We now analyze the outage performance of inter-connected relaying FSO system

considering negligible pointing error impairments, and when CSI is available and
when it is unavailable at the relay and destination nodes.

3.3.1 When CSI Is Not Available

When no CSI is available at the relay and destination nodes, the outage probability
ðNÞ
can be found by substituting (4) in (3), after replacing Fcxy ðcth Þ with pxy in (3).

3.3.2 When CSI Is Available

When CSI is available at relay and destination nodes, the selective relaying protocol
can be used for transmitting the data along the strongest path, as mentioned earlier.
In this case, the outage probability of the system is given as [8]
Pout = (Pout for NIR-FSO system with CSI)  Q, where Q = 1  Q11 Q12 Q13 ,
ð3Þ ð2Þ ð3Þ ð2Þ
ð3Þ ð1pSR ÞpR ð1pR Þp ðNÞ
and Q11 = 1  pR12 , Q12 ¼ 1
ð2Þ
1D
, Q13 ¼ 2D SR2
ð2Þ , respectively, with pR12
pSR D pSR D
1 2
denoting the outage probability of the link R12, and is given by (4).
306 H. Khanna et al.

4 Numerical Results

In this section, we present the simulation results for the outage performance of the
system. We assume the values of Cn2 for moderate and strong turbulence as
3  10−14 and 1  10−13 m−2/3, respectively. The wavelength of the optical signal,
k, is assumed to be equal to 1550 nm, the attenuation coefficient r = 0.43 dB/km,
R = 0.625 A/W, and Tb is in the order of nanoseconds.
Figure 2 considers the independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) characteristics
for the channels, where the distances dSR1 ¼ dR12 ¼ dR2D ¼ dSR2 ¼ dR1D = 1000 m,
and where dSR1 is the distance between S and R1, dR12 is the distance between R1 and R2,
dR2D is the distance between R2 and D, dSR2 is distance between S and R2, and dR1D is the
distance between R1 and D, respectively. Figure 2 illustrates a plot of outage proba-
bility as a function of average SNR per hop Ω (dB) for various turbulence conditions
with pointing errors n1 = 1.2 and n2 = 4.0. As per the expectation, the outage per-
formance deteriorates with increase in turbulence strength and pointing errors.
For Fig. 3, we consider the i.n.i.d. fading characteristics for the optical links,
with dSR1 ¼ dR12 ¼ dR2D = 1000 m, and dSR2 ¼ dR1D = 2500 m. It can be seen that
the inter-connected relaying technique outperforms the non-interconnected (paral-
lel) relaying and serial relaying techniques, for the given values of distances
between the nodes. Moreover, inter-connected relaying without CSI performs better
than the one where CSI is available, for higher values of SNR. It is due to the use of
DF relaying protocol which leads to better noise rejection at higher SNRs.

Fig. 2 Outage probability versus avg. SNR (dB) of a relayed FSO system, cth = 5 dB
Outage Analysis of an Inter-relay Assisted … 307

Fig. 3 Outage probability versus avg. SNR (dB) of a relayed FSO system with no pointing errors,
cth = 5 dB

5 Conclusion

In this paper, we investigated the outage performance of a one way inter-connected

dual relay FSO communication system. The closed form expression for outage
probability were obtained and the effect of various system parameters on it, was
studied. We observed that the absence of direct link between source and destination
nodes does not significantly degrades the performance of the system, due to the use
of inter-relay connections.

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