Search Results (10)

The outdoor terrestrial terahertz (THz) communication links have recently attracted great research and commercial interest in response to the emerging bandwidth-hungry demands for extremely high-speed wireless data transmissions. However, their development is hindered by the random behavior of the atmospheric channel due to the molecular attenuation, adverse weather effects, and atmospheric turbulence (along with free space path loss (FSPL) and pointing errors) due to the stochastic misalignments between the transmitter and the receiver. Thus, in this work, we investigate the joint influence of these detrimental effects on both capacities, i.e., average (ergodic) and outage, of such a typical line of sight (LOS) THz communication link. Specifically, atmospheric turbulence-induced intensity fluctuations can be modeled by using either the suitable gamma or the well-known gamma–gamma distribution for weak and moderate to strong turbulence conditions, respectively. Additionally, weak to strong stochastic misalignment-induced intensity fluctuations, due to generalized pointing errors with non-zero boresight (NZB), are emulated by the appropriate Beckman distribution. Taking into additional consideration the unavoidable presence of FSPL and the different but realistic water vapor concentration values along with the influence of weather conditions, an outage performance analysis has been conducted. Considering the abovementioned significant effects, novel analytical mathematical expressions have been extracted for both average (ergodic) and outage capacity, which are critical metrics that first incorporate the total influence of all of the above significant effects on the THz links’ performance. Through the derived expressions, proper analytical results verified by simulations are presented and demonstrate the validity of our analysis. It is notable that the derived expressions can accommodate realistic parameter values involved in all the above-mentioned major effects and link characteristics. In this context, they provide encouraging quantitative results and outcomes for both capacity metrics under investigation. The latter enables the design and the establishment of modern and future high-speed THz links, which are expected to cover longer propagation distances and thus become even more vulnerable to atmospheric turbulence effect. This is modeled and incorporated in our analysis and expressions contrary to most of the previous works in the open technical literature. Full article

In recent years, the THz frequency band (0.3 THz–10 THz) has attracted an increasing research interest for the realization of emerging high-speed wireless communication links. Nevertheless, the propagation of THz signals through the atmospheric channel is primarily subjected to signal attenuation due to free space path loss (FSPL), water vapor, adverse weather conditions along with atmospheric turbulence-induced and misalignment-induced scintillations. Therefore, in this work, a multi-hop line-of-sight THz system that utilizes serially connected decode-and-forward relays is proposed to extend the total THz coverage distance under the presence of fog, rain or clear weather conditions, as well as water vapor, atmospheric turbulence, non-zero boresight pointing errors and FSPL. Under these circumstances, an average bit error rate (ABER) analysis is performed. In this context, novel closed-form ABER expressions are derived. Their analytical results demonstrate the influence of each of the above limiting factors as well as their joint impact on the ABER performance. Finally, the feasibility of extending the total THz link distance through multi-hop relaying configurations is also evaluated. Full article

FSO communication is a viral technology among optical wireless communications, gathering the interest of both researchers and manufacturers. This is because of the many advantages associated with FSO communication, including high data rates, reliability, safety, and economy. However, there are several unavoidable drawbacks that shadow the performance of FSO systems. For example, atmospheric turbulence is a well-known problem related to the weather conditions of the channel, which causes the scintillation effect. Also, spatial jitter due to pointing errors is a critical factor of the link’s performance, caused by occasional misalignments between the transmitter and the receiver. Moreover, time jitter is another limiting agent that deteriorates the total throughput, inducing bit stream misdetections, caused by the arrival of out-of-sync pulses. All three effects have been exhaustively studied and many statistical models and interesting solutions have been proposed in the literature to estimate their magnitude and compensate for their impact. In this work, the turbulence effect was treated by Málaga distribution, the spatial jitter effect was regulated by the non-zero boresight model, and the time jitter effect was modeled by the generalized Gaussian distribution. Various modulation schemes were studied, along with DF multi-hop and optimal combining diversity techniques at the receiver’s end. New, accurate mathematical expressions of average BER performance have been obtained, and valuable conclusions were drawn thanks to the presented numerical results. Full article

Recent developments in both optical wireless communication (OWC) systems and implanted medical devices (IMDs) have introduced transdermal optical wireless (TOW) technology as a viable candidate for extremely high-speed in-body to out-of-body wireless data transmissions, which are growing in demand for many vital biomedical applications, including telemetry with medical implants, health monitoring, neural recording and prostheses. Nevertheless, this emerging communication modality is primarily hindered by skin-induced attenuation of the propagating signal bit carrier along with its stochastic misalignment-induced fading. Thus, by considering a typical modulated retroreflective (MRR) TOW system with spatial diversity and optimal combining (OC) for signal reception in this work, we focus, for the first time in the MRR TOW literature, on the stochastic nature of generalized pointing errors with non-zero boresight (NZB). Specifically, under these circumstances, novel analytical mathematical expressions were derived for the total average bit error rate (BER) of various system configurations. Their results revealed significant outage performance enhancements when spatial diversity was utilized. Moreover, taking into consideration the total transdermal pathloss along with the effects of stochastic NZB pointing errors, the critical average signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) metric was evaluated for typical power spectral-density values. Full article

Over the past few years, terrestrial free space optical (FSO) communication systems have demonstrated increasing research and commercial interest. However, due the signal’s propagation path, the operation of FSO links depends strongly on atmospheric conditions and related phenomena. One such significant phenomenon is the scintillation caused by atmospheric turbulence effects; in order to address the significant performance degradation that this causes, several statistical models have been proposed. Here, turbulence-induced fading of the received optical signal is investigated through the recently presented mixture Gamma distribution, which accurately describes the irradiance fluctuations at the receiver’s input of the FSO link. Additionally, at the same time, it significantly reduces the mathematical complexity of the expressions used for the description of composite channels with turbulence along with nonzero boresight pointing error-induced fading. In order to counterbalance the performance mitigation due to these effects, serial decode-and-forward relays are employed, and the performance of the system is estimated through derived mathematical expressions. Full article

The last few years, the scientific field of optical wireless communications (OWC) has witnessed tremendous progress, as reflected in the continuous emergence of new successful high data rate services and variable sophisticated applications. One such development of vital research importance and interest is the employment of high speed, robust, and energy-effective transdermal optical wireless (TOW) links for telemetry with implantable medical devices (IMDs) that also have made considerable progress lately for a variety of medical applications, mainly including neural recording and prostheses. However, the outage performance of such TOW links is significantly degraded due to the strong attenuation that affects the propagating information-bearing optical signal through the skin, along with random misalignments between transmitter and receiver terminals, commonly known as pointing error effect. In order to anticipate this, in this work we introduce a SIMO TOW reception diversity system that employs either OOK or more power-effective L-PPM schemes. Taking into account the joint impact of skin-induced attenuation and non-zero boresight pointing errors, modeled through the suitable Beckmann distribution, novel closed-form mathematical expressions for the average BER of the total TOW system are derived. Thus, the possibility of enhancing the TOW availability by using reception diversity configurations along with the appropriate modulation format is investigated. Finally, the corresponding numerical results are presented using the new derived theoretical outcomes. Full article

Free space optics (FSO) technology has demonstrated an increasingly scientific and commercial interest over the past few years. However, due to signal propagation in the atmosphere, the operation depends strongly on the atmospheric conditions and some random impairments, including turbulence and pointing error (PE) effects. In the present study, a single-input multiple-output FSO system with wavelength, spatial, or time diversity over the turbulence and non-zero boresight PE effects is thoroughly investigated. A versatile mixture composite model which accurately describes both impairments is employed for the performance evaluation. Novel mathematical expressions of the outage probability and the average bit-error rate assuming intensity modulation/direct detection and optimal combining at the reception are provided. Full article

This study investigated the outage performance of a terrestrial FSO communication system that uses mixed series and parallel decode-and-forward (DF) relay-assisted (i.e., cooperative diversity) configurations, taking into account the influence of both atmospheric turbulence and pointing error effects. Turbulence-induced optical signal fading is modeled by gamma-gamma or the negative exponential distribution for weak to strong and saturated turbulence conditions, respectively. Additionally, weak to strong non-zero boresight misalignment-induced optical signal fading is modeled by the generalized Beckmann distribution. Under these conditions, an outage analysis of the examined FSO system is performed, in terms of both outage probability and mean outage duration metrics. Thus, fairly accurate closed-form mathematical expressions for both performance metrics are derived, while their corresponding analytical results demonstrate concrete performance and availability improvements for the total FSO system, especially when the number of the connected in parallel DF relays increases. Moreover, the obtained results are verified through the corresponding simulation results. Full article

A CDMA RoFSO link with receivers’ spatial diversity is studied. Turbulence-induced fading, modeled by the M(alaga) distribution, is considered that hamper the FSO link performance along with the nonzero boresight pointing errors effect. Novel, analytical closed-form expressions are extracted for the estimation of the average bit-error-rate and the outage probability of the CDMA RoFSO system for both directions of the forward and the reverse link. The numerical results show clearly the performance improvement of using spatial diversity, even in the most adverse atmospheric conditions with strong and saturated atmospheric turbulence with enhanced misalignment. Also, the effects of nonlinear distortion, multiple access interference and clipping noise aggravate the performance of the link, where cases with large number of users are taken into account. Full article

Subcarrier free-space optical (FSO) systems using coherent recovery techniques at the receiver have acquired growing research interest in recent times. However, their optimal performance is diminished by the non-perfect synchronization of carrier frequency and phase, which is mainly due to phase noise problems. Moreover, turbulence and pointing error effects further deteriorate the overall performance. However, relay transmission schemes can extend the coverage distance and offer substantial improvements over fading conditions. In this respect, we consider a serially relayed network using decode-and-forward relays, and investigate its performance by means of average symbol error probability and mean outage duration. Turbulence is modeled by the recently unified M(alaga) distribution, which constitutes a very general statistical model that accurately describes the irradiance fluctuations from weak-to-strong turbulence conditions. Additionally, the presence of non-zero boresight pointing errors due to misalignment between the transmitter–receiver pair is considered, while the effect of phase noise is specified by a Tikhonov distribution. A comparison between single line-of-sight and serially relayed FSO configurations is provided as well. Novel approximated mathematical expressions are deduced, which are proved to be accurate enough over a wide range of turbulence strengths and signal-to-noise values. Finally, proper numerical results are presented and validated by Monte Carlo simulations. Full article