Performance Analysis of FSO Systems Over a Lognormal-Rician Turbulence Channel With Generalized Pointing Errors

In this paper, an approximate closed-form probability density function expression for the Lognormal-Rician atmospheric turbulence with generalized pointing errors model is developed by using a series representation. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) goodness-of-fit statistical tool is employed to verify the accuracy of the proposed approximation. We demonstrate that a more efficient approximation can be achieved for the smaller jitter variances and nonzero boresight displacements. To reveal the importance of the proposed approximation, the approximate analytic expressions for the ergodic capacity and outage performance of single-input single-output free-space optical (FSO) systems are derived. It is observed that the pointing errors significantly degrade the performance of FSO links. By using the obtained asymptotic expressions, the impact of pointing errors on the ergodic capacity is considerably mitigated by selecting the optimum beam width at the transmitter side. We find that the optimum beam width is independent of atmospheric turbulence and the Pearson correlation coefficient in high signal-to-noise ratio conditions. All of the derived analytical results are confirmed by Monte Carlo simulation results.