Performance of Optical Wireless Communications with Spatial Diversity over Fisher-Snedecor Turbelence Channels

Atmospheric turbulence and misalignment fading due to pointing errors severely degrade the performance of free-space optics (FSO) communications. To mitigate these issues and leverage the benefits of spatial diversity, multiple antennas can be employed at the transmitter and/or receiver of the optical communication link. Spatial diversity serves as critical technology to enhance communication performance of optical wireless systems, especially in strong turbulence channels. In this research, we study the average bit error ratio (ABER) performance of FSO systems considering the Fisher-Snedecor F-modeled turbulence fading channels and pointing errors, and explore the potential benefits of spatial diversity at both ends of the optical link. Additionally, we provide an efficient approximate closed-form expression for the ABER of single input multiple output FSO systems.