Asymptotic Performance of Generalized Transmit Laser Selection Over Lognormal Turbulence Channels

In free space optical communication systems, transmit laser selection (TLS) has been proposed as an efficient fading-mitigation technique over turbulence channels. In TLS, the transmitter is equipped with a number of laser sources and the best laser source is selected for transmission. In practice, feedback error or outdated selection due to temporal changes in the channel may result in selecting another source rather than the best one. In this letter, we consider a FSOC system with generalized TLS (GTLS) where the n
^th
best laser is selected among the available N lasers. Under the assumption of lognormal turbulence channels in addition to pointing errors, we derive a closed-form expression for asymptotic bit error rate. We use our derived closed-form expression to determine the diversity gains. We finally present simulation results to corroborate our analytical findings.