Subcarrier PSK Performance in Terrestrial FSO Links Impaired by Gamma-Gamma Fading, Pointing Errors, and Phase Noise

For terrestrial free-space optical (FSO) communication systems, subcarrier intensity modulation represents an attractive alternative to on-off keying or pulse-position modulation, which is mainly because of the larger spectral efficiency. However, some degradation of the error performance must be taken into account due to nonperfect synchronization of carrier frequency and phase. In a recently published paper, the average bit error probability has been analyzed for M-ary phase-shift keying in the presence of phase noise for a terrestrial FSO link impaired by lognormal fading. In the this paper, we are extending this study to a gamma-gamma model, which is usually applied in case of moderate-to-strong scintillation effects. On top of that, pointing errors, caused by a misalignment between transmitter and receiver of the FSO link, are considered as well. Since a closed-form solution is not available under general conditions and because numerical methods are time-consuming, suffering in part also from serious convergence and stability problems, we provide approximate closed-form expressions, which are accurate enough over a wide signal-to-noise ratio range.