Impact of Pointing Errors on the Performance of Coherent Free-Space Optical Systems

Abstract

In this letter, we investigate the performance of a coherent free-space optical (FSO) communications system considering geometric spread and pointing errors as well as atmospheric turbulence fading and path loss. In particular, we derive the outage probability and average error probability of the coherent FSO system, considering the combined effects of path loss, geometric spread and pointing errors, and amplitude fluctuations and phase aberrations in series representations forms. Numerical and Monte Carlo simulation results confirm the validity of the derived outage probability and average error probability expressions.