On the block error rate of FSO links with diversity over mixture gamma turbulence channels

Recently, wireless communications started incorporating FSO systems to a large extent due to their high bandwidth and the low installation and operational cost. However, their performance deteriorates significantly due to the atmosperic conditions. A very significant issue is the atmospheric turbulence which causes the scintillation effect and results in fast power fluctuations at the receiver which can be modelled through the appropriate stochastic models. In this work, for first time to the best of our knowledge, the average block error rate (BLER) performance of a terrestrial FSO communication link with receivers’ diversity is estimated and new mathematical expressions are derived, for weak to strong turbulence channels with the Mixture-Gamma distribution which emulate accurately the most of the well-known turbulence models. The derived expressions are significant, especially for high data rates FSO communication systems and networks, because by estimating accurately the BLER performance, the appropriate coding scheme, for links designing, can be selected.