BER of annular and flat-topped beams in strong turbulence

The average bit error rate (< BER >) of annular and flat-topped beams are evaluated in strong turbulence. In this respect, our earlier results on the scintillation indices obtained by the unified Rytov method are employed and the intensity is taken to be gamma-gamma distributed. For comparison purposes, < BER > for the log-normal intensity distribution is also evaluated. It is found that for the annular beams, the ones that are thinner, possessing smaller ratio of primary to secondary beam size, and smaller focal lengths will have smaller average BER in strong turbulence. For the flat-topped beams, the ones that are flatter and possessing large source sizes have smaller average BER in strong turbulence. Large average SNR substantially reduces the average BER in weak and moderate turbulence, whereas in strong turbulence, the average BER stays at the same value no matter what the average SNR is. Comparison of the log-normal and the gamma-gamma statistics for the intensity shows that the average BER will be higher for the log-normal case when the average SNR is small and the reverse relationship holds at large average SNR. For both the gamma-gamma and the log-normal intensity distributions, < BER > obtained for the annular and the, flat-topped beams in strong turbulence is advantageous over the Gaussian beam < BER > values. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.