SIMO PPM Optical Wireless Communication System over Gamma Turbulence Channels with Generalized Pointing Errors

In this work, the performance of a free-space optical communication system using spatial diversity on the receiver's side with optimal combining, is studied. The information signal is conveyed using the L-PPM scheme and the proposed wireless optical system is assumed to be hampered by the atmospheric turbulence effect modeled by the Gamma distribution and the misalignment fading modeled by the recently launched generalized pointing error model. Novel analytical closed-form expressions are derived for the average bit error rate (BER) estimation for such a communication system. Using the derived mathematical expressions, numerical results are illustrated for various turbulence conditions, different pointing error cases and receivers' diversity configurations.