Design and Investigation of a 10 Gb/s Hybrid Spatial-time Diversity FSO-CDMA Communication System

Abstract This paper presents a novel strategy for free space optical (FSO) communication system that combines hybrid spatial-time diversity and optical code division multiple access (OCDMA). The authors demonstrate a 10 Gb/s hybrid spatial-time diversity FSO-CDMA experimental system for the first time. They investigate the bit error rate (BER) and physical-layer security under weak and strong turbulence conditions. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can improve the performance of the FSO-CDMA system. In the hybrid spatial-time diversity FSO-CDMA system, the BER of the eavesdropper (Eve) exceeds the hard-decision forward-error-correction threshold of 3.8E-3. It is also worth noting that Eve can intercept and recover data without a matched decoder in a spatial diversity FSO-CDMA system. As a result, the proposed scheme can simultaneously enhance reliability and physical-layer security compared to time or spatial diversity systems.