A SVM-based processor for free-space optical communication

In this paper, we propose a novel block-wise detection technique using support vector machine (SVM) to overcome the scintillation noise in free-space optical (FSO) links. Considering that the turbulence fading is of millisecond level and the signalling rates can typically be hundreds of Mbps, the SVM method provides an extremely large data block which is proportional to the bit rates. At the bit rate of 100 Mbps, for example, a block length of 10⁵ bits is reached. Moreover, the calculation of SVM scheme is independent of the channel's turbulence conditions and the received signal models, and requires no knowledge of prior information or heuristic assumptions. Numerical simulations show that the SVM-based detector can mitigate the fading-channel impairments effectively. With the application of the 4-fold cross validation and grid-search, the best SVM parameters can be acquired and adapted to the channel condition dynamically.