BER ESTIMATION FOR A PSK OFDM ROFSO SERIALLY RELAYED LINK WITH POINTING

ERRORS OVER GAMMA GAMMA TURBULENCE CHANNELS

M.P. Ninos1, H.E. Nistazakis1,*, A.N. Stassinakis1,
A.D. Tsigopoulos2, G.S. Tombras1
1: Department of Electronics, Computers, Telecommunications and Control, Faculty of
Physics, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, 15784, Greece
e-mails: {ninmichail; enistaz; a-stasinakis; gtombras}@phys.uoa.gr
2: Department of Battle Systems, Naval Operations, Sea Studies, Navigation, Electronics
and Telecommunications, Hellenic Naval Academy, Hadjikyriakou ave,
Piraeus 18539, Greece, e-mail: atsigo@snd.edu.gr
*: Corresponding author: H.E. Nistazakis, enistaz@phys.uoa.gr

ABSTRACT
The free space optical (FSO) communication
systems have attracted extensive research and
commercial interest because of their high capacity
levels that can achieve, the ease of deployment, the
license free spectrum use, the low operational and
installation cost that they offer. On the other hand
their performance depends strongly on the
atmospheric conditions. In this work we investigate
a Radio-on-FSO (RoFSO) system with serial
decode and forward (DF) relay nodes using the
orthogonal frequency division multiplexing
(OFDM) scheme with phase shift keying (PSK)
modulation, taking into account the turbulenceinduced scintillations modeled with the GammaGamma distribution, the pointing error effect due
to the misalignment of the trans-receiver system
(i.e. the spatial jitter) and the nonlinearity of the
transmitter laser diode. For this setup which is
taking into account the influence of both effects
simultaneously, i.e. turbulence and spatial jitter, we
derive closed form mathematical expressions for
the estimation of each link and for total systems
bit error rate (BER) performance. Using them, we
present results for realistic parameter values of the
optical link, the atmospheric turbulence effect and
the spatial jitter.
KEYWORDS:
BER,
Terrestrial
Wireless
Optical
Communications, OFDM, PSK, Gamma-Gamma
distribution, Pointing Errors, DF Relays.
I. INTRODUCTION
The FSO communication systems and more
specifically the RoFSO configuration is a similar
technology to the well known radio over fiber
(RoF) links excluding the fiber medium [1]-[7].
The main application of these systems is the last
mile wireless access facilitation between a central
base station and remote cellular base stations
establishing reliable and high bandwidth

connectivity which can replace or can be used as

complementary to a fiber cable network [1]-[7].
However the performance of those systems is
affected significantly by the temporal and spatial
characteristics of the atmospheric path. The
temporal refractive index variations of the
atmospheric medium, caused by the turbulence
effect, influence the optical intensity profile on the
receivers side. As the turbulence strength increases
the optical intensity fluctuations are increased
proportionally in a random way and can be
described by many statistical models which have
been proposed taking into account the specific
atmospheric turbulence strength of each area where
the FSO link can be installed, [1]-[12].
Additionally, another effect which mitigates
significantly the performance of the FSO links is
the misalignment between the trans-receiver of the
communication system due to the building sway,
wind loads, small earthquakes etc. This transreceiver misalignment causes pointing errors, i.e.
spatial jitter, which results in additional signal
fading, [10]-[12].
Moreover a harmful effect concerning the
atmospheric path transmission is the attenuation of
the optical signal. The attenuation is provoked by
the absorption and scattering processes which
depend on the air composition from molecules such
as water, carbon dioxide, ozone etc. and other
particulate matter usually larger than molecules like
particles formed by gaseous emissions, dust, seasalt particles etc, [1]-[12].
As a consequence of the aforementioned
effects related to the atmospheric medium the
wireless optical communication systems can
operate reliably over relatively short distances. In
order to overcome these imposed constraints on the
atmospheric transmission many multi-hop systems
using relay nodes have been proposed in the
literature. Here, the relay nodes under consideration
are decode and forward (DF) ones, [3], [13]-[15].

The OFDM scheme is a special type of

multiple subcarrier modulation (MSM) which has
been adopted in many digital audio broadcasting
services, digital subscriber lines (DSL), wireless
local area networks (WLAN), modern cellular
mobile networks etc. The OFDM technique offers
high spectral efficiency, robustness against
frequency selective fading and avoids inter-symbol
and narrow-band interference. On the other hand,
the large number of subcarriers creates undesired
high peak to average power ratios (PAPR). The
high peak to average power ratios that exhibits the
OFDM signal combined with an additional dc bias
in order to be applicable to intensity
modulation/direct detection IM/DD optical
systems, inflicts efficiency mitigation due to intermodulation distortion (IMD) by the limited linear
operating range of the laser diode (LD), [1]-[3],
[16]-[21].
In this work, we investigate the performance of
a PSK OFDM RoFSO system with DF relays over
Gamma Gamma modeled turbulence channels
taking into account the pointing error effect, as
well. More specifically, we derive closed form
mathematical expressions for the estimation of the
average BER of each individual PSK OFDM
RoFSO link and for the whole relayed
communication system, taking into account not
only the atmospheric turbulence effect but the
spatial jitter as well. It is worth mentioned here that
the obtained closed form expression seems to be
complicated but their results can easily and without
loss of time, evaluated by the most of the well
known mathematical software packages.
II. THE CHANNEL MODEL
The optical communication system under
consideration is a terrestrial RoFSO multi-hop link
which is using the OFDM scheme with PSK
modulation, for signals transmission. The initial
high data rate streams are separated into lower rate
parallel
streams
and
then
transmitted
simultaneously by multiple narrow band orthogonal
subcarriers. The OFDM signal for N subcarriers,
just before the LD after up conversion to the carrier
frequency fc, is given as, [2]:
N 1

sOFDM t sn t

(1)

n 0

N 1

X n exp in 2f c t
n 0

for 0 t Ts

where each orthogonal subcarrier has an angular

frequency of n=2n/Ts, n=0,, N-1, Ts is the
OFDM symbol duration, and Xn represents the
complex data symbol of the nth subcarrier which is
mapped according to the selected modulation
format which, in this case is the PSK, [2], [3]. The

transmitted optical power P(t) is formulated by a

series expansion and is given as, [2]:
3
N 1
N 1

Pt Pt 1
mn sn t a3
mn sn t

n 0
n 0

(2)

where, Pt, is the average transmitted optical power,

a3 stands for the third order nonlinearity coefficient
of the LD and mn indicates the optical modulation
index (OMI) per subcarrier defined as mn=I/(IbIth), with I being the variation of the laser driving
current around a bias point and Ib, Ith, represent the
bias and threshold laser currents respectively, [2],
[3]. The received optical power after the signal
propagation into the atmosphere is given as
Pr(t)=P(t)LtotI+n(t), where Ltot is the overall
attenuation factor which encompasses the beam
extinction from scattering and absorption, [2], [3].
The additive white Gaussian noise of the channel,
i.e. AWGN, is characterized as n(t) and I stands for
the total normalized instantaneous irradiance on the
receivers side which is given as a product of two
random factors It and Ip, i.e. I=ItIp, where It stands
for the dependence of the normalized irradiance
from the atmospheric turbulence effect while Ip
represents its dependence on the alignment of the
optical beam due to the pointing errors [2], [3],
[10]-[12], [14]. The induced photo-current, i(t,I),
by the impinging power on the photo-detector PD
at the receiver is given as, [2]:
3
N 1
N 1

i t , I I 0 1
mn sn t a3
mn sn t noptt

n 0
n 0

(3)

with I0=LtotPtI being the dc of current, stands for

the responsivity of the PD, while nopt denotes the
optical noise which can be considered as AWGN
with zero mean and N0/2 variance, with
N0=4KBTF/RL+2qI0+I02(RIN), [2], [5]. Where, KB
is the Boltzmanns constant, T is the temperature, F
is the noise figure of the receiver, RL the load
resistor at the PDs side, q the electron charge and
RIN represents the relative intensity noise from the
laser which is a function of the square of the optical
power, [2].
Moreover, the IMD effect due to the finite
linear operating range of the LD transmitter is an
important factor that degrades the efficiency of the
optical system. The IMD noise for each subcarrier
is given as, [2], [3]:
2
IMD
,n

9a32 mn6 I 02

128

1n 12 N n
2nN n 1 N N 5 2

(4)
2

The total electrical carrier to noise plus

distortion ratio (CNDR) for each OFDMs
subcarrier including, both, the optical and the IMD
noise is given as, [2]:
CNDRn I

mn2 2 L2totPt2 I 2

2
2 N 0 TS IMD
,n

(5)

By assuming that the total noise which appears

at the denominator of (5), i.e. optical and IMD
noise, is Gaussian, and that can be approximated by
averaging over scintillation, [2], the CNDR per
subcarrier, can be, approximately, given as, [2], [3]:
CNDRn I

mn2 2 L2totPt2 I 2

2
2 N0 TS AV IMD
,n AV

(6)

where the expression [.] AV stands for the average

value over scintillation, [2], [5].
Next, the expected value of CNDR, i.e.
[CNDRn] EX, can be obtained from (6), as a function
of the expected value of the normalized irradiance,
I, as, [3], [5]:

CNDRn AV

mn LtotPt EI 2
2
AV
2N 0 Ts AV IMD

(7)

where E[.] stands for the expected value of the

included quantity.
III. TURBULENCE AND POINTING ERRORS
The irradiance level of the optical signal on the
photodetectors side fluctuates rapidly for relatively
short wireless optical links, due to the scintillation
effect caused by the atmospheric turbulence and the
pointing errors inflicted by the misalignment of the
trans-receiver system, [1]-[12], [22]. To begin with,
the optical irradiance variations due to scintillations
are described by many statistical models which
have been proposed over the years in order to
simulate the intensity fluctuations of the received
optical signal [23]-[35]. One of them is the gammagamma distribution which is accurate enough for
strong atmospheric turbulence conditions. Its
probability density function (PDF) is given as,
[23]:
a b

f I t I t

a b

1
2ab 2
I 2
K a b 2 abI t
a b t

(8)

where K(.) is the modified Bessel function of the

second kind of order , and (.) is the gamma
function, while, a and b can be directly related to
links parameters, through the expressions, [3],
[23], [36], [37]:

0.49 2
1
a exp
1 0.18d 2 0.56 12/ 5 7 / 6

(9)

and

5 / 6

0.51 2 1 0.69 12 / 5

b exp
1
2
2 12 / 5 5 6

1 0.9d 0.62d

(10)

where d kD2 L1 4 , k=2/, represent the optical

wave number with being the operational
wavelength of the optical wireless link, L is the
length of the optical link and D stands for the
receivers circular aperture diameter. Additionally,
2 is the Rytov variance and is given as
2
2 0.5Cn2k 7 / 6L11/ 6 . The value of the parameter Cn ,
which depends on the atmospheric turbulence
strength, usually, varies between 110-17 m-2/3 and
110-13 m-2/3 for weak to strong atmospheric
turbulence conditions, [38].
Apart from the turbulence another factor that
influences the irradiance level of the received
signal is the pointing errors of the optical beam.
The pointing errors can be described by the
following probability density function, [10], [11],
[14]:
f I p (I p )

2
2

2
I p 1

with

0 I p A0

(11)

A0

where denotes the ratio between the equivalent

beam radius at the receiver and the pointing error
displacement standard deviation, i.e. spatial jitter, at
the receiver and is given as Wz,eq 2 S , with S
being the pointing error displacement at the
receiver, while the Wz,eq is the equivalent beam
width and is estimated through the expressions
Wz2,eq erf Wz2 2 exp 2 ,
A0 erf 2

r 2Wz , where erf(.) stands for the error

function while the parameters r and Wz represent the
radius of the circular detection aperture at the
receiver and the waist of the beams Gaussian
spatial intensity profile, respectively, [10], [11],
[14].
The combined PDF of the total channel fading
coefficient is given as, [10], [11], [14], [39], [40]:
f comb, I ( I )

I |I t I | I t f I t I t dI t

(12)

The derived combined PDF for I, is obtained by

substituting (8) and (11) in (12) and has the
following form, [11]:

f comb, I I

where

abI

ab 2
2

G13,,30
2

A0 a b
A0 1, a 1, b 1

G m,n

p,q

corresponds to the Meijer-function

IV. THE TOTAL AVERAGE BER

The BER is an important performance metric
for every communication link. In this section we
produce a closed form mathematical expression for
the estimation of the average BER of each
individual PSK OFDM RoFSO link and for the
whole serial relayed communication system. As we
mentioned before, each subcarrier is modulated with
a selected modulation format. Here, all the N
subcarriers are modulated with PSK. Assuming
Gray code mapping at the transmitter and an
AWGN channel the total BER of the N subcarriers
in the l hop, is given as, [3], [42]:
N 1
Pb ,l , K PSK

log 2 K
(14)
N 1

erfc CNDRn ,l I sin
K
n 0

where K is the constellation of the PSK modulation,

and erfc(.) is the complementary error function. By
averaging over the combined channel fading
coefficient I we calculate the average BER of each
individual RoFSO link, [3]:
N 1

log 2 K

N 1

erfc CNDRn,l I sin f comb, I ( I )dI

K

n 0 0

(15)

By substituting (13) into (15) and replacing the

erfc(.) with the suitable Meijer function, [41], we
conclude to the following closed form mathematical
expression for the estimation of the average BER of
each individual PSK OFDM RoFSO link:

Pb,l , K PSK , Av

N 1 2 2 a b 3 2

log 2 K a b

Pb,tot, Av

(16)

1 2 2 2 1 a 2 a 1 b 2 b

,
,
,
,
,
,1
N 1
2
2
2
2
2

G72,,46 2

2 1 2
n 0
0
,
0
.
5
,

2
2

where CNDR ab 2 4 A 2 sin 2 .

n ,l EX
0
K

The total average BER of the whole optical

communication system consisting of L individual
hops in case of DF relay nodes is given using the
expression, [3], [13], [15]:

1 2P

b,m, Av

b,l , Av

l 1

that is a standard built in function which can be

evaluated with most of the well known
mathematical software packages, [36], [41].

Pb,l , K PSK , Av

(13)

m l 1

(17)

By substituting (16) into (17) we conclude to the

following closed form expression for the estimation
of the average BER for the serially relayed PSK
OFDM RoFSO link with L-1 DF relay nodes:

Pb ,tot, Av

N 1 2 2 a b 3 2

log 2 K a b

(18)

N 1

L
L
N 1 2 2 a b 3

n ,l 1 2

n,m

log
K

b
l 1 n 0
n 0
m l 1
2

2 N 1

where
1 2 2 2 1 a 2 a 1 b 2 b

,
,
,
,
,
,1 .
2
2
2
2
2

n ,l G72,,46 2

2 1 2
0, 0.5, ,

2
2

V. NUMERICAL RESULTS
In this section we present numerical results
using the expressions (16) and (18) which have
been derived above, for the average BER of the
whole optical RoFSO link with serial DF relay
nodes. For these numerical calculations we use
some common values in regard to a typical RoFSO
link. Thus, the number of OFDM subcarriers have
been chosen equal to N=2000 and N=3000. The
photodetectors response is 0.8 A/W, while the
transmitted optical power Pt and the total losses for
each individual link are 20 dBm and -20 dB,
respectively. The load resistor is 50 , Ts is 1ms, the
relative intensity noise, RIN, is equal to -130 dB/Hz,
the absolute temperature is 300 K, and the third
order nonlinear parameter for the inter-modulation
distortion has been fixed at 910-4, [2]-[4].
Additionally, the aperture diameter of the receiver
has been taken to be 5 cm and the calculations were
implemented with the two ratios of s/r i.e. 0.1, 0.5
and for wz/r=2. These two values of the fraction s/r,
corresponds to different strength of the pointing
errors effect. The Cn2 value which is proportional to
the atmospheric turbulence strength value has been
chosen to be equal to 710-15 m-2/3 or 110-14 m-2/3
which corresponds to moderate or strong turbulence
conditions, respectively. Finally the length of each
individual link is 3000 m, the operating wavelength
is =1.55 m, and the number of hops was chosen
equal to 3 and 5 respectively, [2], [3]. It is worth
mentioning here that below we present results for
the case where the link length of each individual
PSK OFDM RoFSO link remains at 3000 m.
Therefore, the total link length of the whole
communication system increases by increasing the
number of relays, e.g. if three relay nodes are used
the total link length of the system is 12 km, while
for five relay nodes, the total length of the RoFSO

system is 18km. Thus, it is expected to obtain as

results higher values for average BER, when we are
using larger node number, since the link length
increases. Moreover, it is clear that, using the above
derived expressions (16) and (18), the average BER
performance metric of the whole communication
system can be estimated for any combination of
systems parameters is needed for the designing and
implementation of specific wireless optical links.

Figure 4: BER estimation for a 64-PSK OFDM RoFSO link, for

N=2000 or 3000, with l=5 individual hops, the normalized spatial
jitter s/r=0.1, 0.5, for the case of moderate turbulence conditions,
as a function of the OMI value.

Figure 1: BER estimation for a 16-PSK OFDM RoFSO link, for

N=2000 or 3000, with l=3 individual hops, the normalized spatial
jitter s/r=0.1, 0.5, for the case of moderate turbulence conditions,
as a function of the OMI value.

Figure 5: BER estimation for a 16-PSK OFDM RoFSO link, for

N=2000 or 3000, with l=3 individual hops, the normalized spatial
jitter s/r=0.1, 0.5, for the case of strong turbulence conditions, as
a function of the OMI value.

Figure 2: BER estimation for a 16-PSK OFDM RoFSO link, for

N=2000 or 3000, with l=5 individual hops, the normalized spatial
jitter s/r=0.1, 0.5, for the case of moderate turbulence conditions,
as a function of the OMI value.
Figure 6: BER estimation for a 16-PSK OFDM RoFSO link, for
N=2000 or 3000, with l=5 individual hops, the normalized spatial
jitter s/r=0.1, 0.5, for the case of strong turbulence conditions, as
a function of the OMI value.

Figure 3: BER estimation for a 64-PSK OFDM RoFSO link, for

N=2000 or 3000, with l=3 individual hops, the normalized spatial
jitter s/r=0.1, 0.5, for the case of moderate turbulence conditions,
as a function of the OMI value.

The figures (1)-(4) are shown the BER

evaluation for the cases of a 16 or 64 PSK OFDM
RoFSO system with l individual links, under the
aforementioned turbulence conditions. In the first
four figures we present the BER of the whole
optical link for the case of turbulence strength equal
to Cn2= 710-15 m-2/3, the PSK modulation format
being K= 16 or 64 and the number of the individual
hops consisting the whole system equal to l=3 or 5.

and Greek national funds through the Operational

Program "Education and Lifelong Learning" of the
National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF) Research Funding Program: Thales, Investing in
knowledge society through the European Social
Fund.

Figure 7: BER estimation for a 64-PSK OFDM RoFSO link, for

N=2000 or 3000, with l=3 individual hops, the normalized spatial
jitter s/r=0.1, 0.5, for the case of strong turbulence conditions, as
a function of the OMI value.

Figure 8: BER estimation for a 64-PSK OFDM RoFSO link, for

N=2000 or 3000, with l=5 individual hops, the normalized spatial
jitter s/r=0.1, 0.5, for the case of strong turbulence conditions, as
a function of the OMI value.

Next in figures (5)-(8) is shown the BER with

the same parameter values but in case of strong
turbulence conditions defined from the turbulence
strength equal to Cn2= 110-14 m-2/3.

VI. CONCLUSIONS
In this work we study a RoFSO OFDM PSK
link with DF relay nodes under strong turbulence
conditions with pointing errors. For this setup new
closed form expressions are derived for the
estimation of BER performance of each individual
link and for the whole serially relayed optical
system. The numerical results are presented for
common parameter values of the link, where it is
obvious that the impacts of the strong atmospheric
turbulence and misalignment fading are significant.
The efficiency of the whole system degrades with
the increase of the subcarriers number, turbulence
strength and pointing error displacement. However
the usage of relay nodes is essential in order to
achieve larger propagation distances and
counterbalance the mitigation effects related to free
space atmospheric transmission.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This research has been co-financed by the
European Union (European Social Fund ESF)

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