Researcher link workshop:

Recent Advances and Developments in Communication Systems

Free-Space Optical Communications:

Performance Evaluation and Improvement Methods
Dang The Ngoc

Department of Optical Communications

Posts and Telecommunications Institute of Technology, Vietnam

Content
1. Free-space Optical Communications
Introduction
Model of FSO systems
2. Atmospheric Channel
Atmospheric Attenuation
Atmospheric Turbulence
Misalignment Fading
3. Performance Evaluation
4. Performance Improvement Methods
5. Conclusion and Future Research
2

1. Free-Space Optical Communications

Introduction
FSO
Free-Space Optical Communications or Free-Space Optics
Atmospheric Optical Communications
A line-of-sight technology that enables data transmission based on the

propagation of light in free space.

Advantages
High speed
License-free
Quick deployment
Cost-effectiveness

Applications
Metro network extensions
Last-mile access
Wireless backhaul

Redundant links to back up fiber

Transmission in populated city areas

Source: http://www.surajinformatics.com/fso-freespace-optics.htm

1. Free-Space Optical Communications (2)

Model of FSO Systems

1. Free-Space Optical Communications (3)

Challenges
High channel loss depending on the weather conditions
Atmospheric turbulence caused by the variations in the
refractive index
Pointing error (or misalignment fading) due to narrow optical
beam and building sway
Limitations
Limited to short-haul communications
Required a light-of-sight connections

2. Atmospheric Channels (1)

Atmospheric Attenuation
The atmospheric channel attenuates the signal traversing it as a
result of absorption and scattering processes.
The concentrations of matter in the atmosphere, which result in
the signal attenuation vary spatially and temporally, and will
depend on the weather conditions.
The attenuation of optical power through the atmospheric is
described by the exponential Beers-Lambert Law as [6]

hl exp l d
al is the attenuation coefficient: at clear air is 0.43 dB/km; at haze is 4.3

dB/km; and at fog is 43 dB/km

d is the transmission distance

(1)

2. Atmospheric Channels (2)

Atmospheric Turbulence
Cause
It is induced by the variations in the refractive index due to inhomogeneties in

temperature and pressure changes

Effect
It causes rapid fluctuations in the intensity and phase of received signal

(scintillation)

Strength
Is described by the refractive index structure constant,

C n2

Weak turbulence: log-normal distribution

Moderate-to-strong turbulence: Gamma-Gamma distribution

2. Atmospheric Channels (3)

Strong Atmospheric Turbulence
The intensity (Gamma-Gamma) distribution

2
1
f h ha
ha 2 K 2 ha

ha:
(.):
K-(.):
R:

channel state for atmospheric turbulence

Gamma function
modified Bessel function

Rytov variance

exp

2
1.23

2
R

76

C n2 d 11 6

0.49

(2)

2
R

1 1.11 12 5
R

2

0
.
51

R
exp
5
1 0.69 12
R

76

56

2. Atmospheric Channels (3)

Misalignment Fading (or pointing errors): the
misalignment between transmitter and receiver
Cause
Wind loads; Thermal expansions; Earthquakes
The movement of building can vary

from 1/200 to 1/800 of the building height

Effect
Optical intensity fluctuation (or fading) at the receiver

Model

f h hp
p

2
2

A0

2 1

hp

0 h p A0

hp: channel state for misalignment fading

: the ratio between the equivalent beam radius and the pointing

error displacement standard deviation

A0: the fraction of the collected power at the center of the beam

(3)

2. Atmospheric Channels (4)

Combined channel model

h hl ha h p

(4)

h: channel state
hl: path loss (deterministic)
ha: atmospheric turbulence (random)
hp: pointing error (random)

f h h

10

A0 hl

1
2

2 1

h A0 hl

K 2 ha dha

(5)

3. Performance Evaluation
FSO system using on-off keying modulation (OOK)
Photo current at the output of the photo-detector
(6)

Signal-to-noise ratio

(7)

Background noise

Thermal noise
(8)

11

4. Performance Improvement Methods (1)

Advanced Modulation Schemes
M-ary Pulse Position Modulation (PPM) [14],[15]
Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) [16]
Forward Error Correction (FEC)
Turbo codes [17], block and convolutional codes [18], ReedSolomon (RS) codes, and low-density parity-check (LDPC)
codes [19]
FEC is one of the best techniques to combat atmospheric
turbulence-induced fading
Limitation:
In high data rate optical transmissions, FEC imposes high delay and

complexity to encoding/decoding units which may not be practical.

12

4. Performance Improvement Methods (2)

Spatial Diversity
Takes advantage of multiple transmit/receive apertures
Increases the total average transmit power of the link and

allows the system to cover longer distances.

Significantly reduce the outage probability and improve the
outage capacity of a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) link
[20], [21].
Limitation:
It may not be always possible to place the receivers sufficiently far apart.
Implementing multiple transmit/receive aperture scheme and designing

encoding/ decoding protocols increase the complexity and implementation

costs of the system
13

4. Performance Improvement Methods (3)

Relay Transmission
The data signal from the source node (transmitter) is relayed
to the destination node (receiver) through intermediate
terminals called relays.
Relay transmission help to increasing free-space link
coverage [22]-[25]
Light-of-Sight connectivity is not necessary
Limitation:
To increase the total communicating distance of the link, a huge number of

relays must be placed between the communicating nodes, that in practice,

may not be possible.

14

4. Performance Improvement Methods (4)

Numerical results

15

5. Conclusion and Future Research

Performance evaluation and improvement methods

are mainly applied to point-to-point communications

To support multiple users, it is necessary deploy FSO-

based multiple-access communication systems.

Future research
Studying performance evaluation and improvement methods
for FSO-based multiple-access communications
Cross layer design and performance analysis of FSO systems

16

Thank you for your attention!

Department of Optical Communications

Posts and Telecommunications Institute of Technology

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