Alamouti-Type STBC for Atmospheric Optical Communication Using Coherent Detection

• Published in: IEEE photonics journal Vol. 6; no. 1; pp. 1 - 17
• Main Authors: Mingbo Niu, Cheng, Julian, Holzman, Jonathan F.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 01.02.2014; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Atmospheric turbulence; Atmospherics; Channels; Coding; Coherence; coherent detection; Computational fluid dynamics; Fading; optical communication; Optical fiber communication; Optical noise; Optical receivers; Optical transmitters; Phase noise; phase-shift keying; space-time block coding; symbol error rate; Turbulence; Turbulent flow
• ISSN: 1943-0655; 1943-0647
• DOI: 10.1109/JPHOT.2014.2302807

Alamouti-type space-time block coding is studied for optical wireless communication systems using coherent detection over atmospheric turbulence channels. Atmospheric turbulence-induced fading and phase noise are known to impair the performance of coherent optical wireless systems. Two new Alamouti-type space-time coded architectures are proposed to overcome turbulence-induced fading and phase noise from transmitter lasers, receiver local oscillators, and turbulence channels. Their error rate performance is analyzed for a wide range of turbulence conditions. With developed analytical error rate expressions, the usefulness of the proposed Alamouti-type space-time block coding is demonstrated for coherent optical wireless communication systems. Numerical results confirm the performance improvements of the proposed systems over that of single-input-single-output systems.