Mitigating of Scintillation Noise in FSO Communication Links using Saturated Optical Amplifiers

Saturated optical amplifiers in amplification and conversion schemes are used for suppression of turbulence noise in FSO links with high scintillation index. The PDF of logic-one and logic-zero levels are measured and compared with those of systems using the erbium doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) and semi-conductor optical amplifier (SOA). The proposed receiver structure using saturated optical amplifiers causes a significant reduction in scintillation index and as a result, a reduction of BER up to three orders of magnitude is observed