Experimental Investigation of the Atmospheric Turbulence Effects on FSO Communication Systems

Free space optical (FSO) communication has emerged as a promising solution for the next-generation beyond-fifth-generation (B5G) wireless communication networks. It offers several advantages, such as wide bandwidth, high data rates, low latency, and no electromagnetic interference. However, the performance of FSO systems is impacted by atmospheric turbulence, pointing errors, and adverse weather conditions. In this paper, we focus on the development of a 60 Mb/s experimental FSO communication system under controlled laboratory conditions. We experimentally demonstrate the BER performance with and without turbulence conditions. We estimate the FSO channel coefficients utilizing the maximal-likelihood (ML) estimation technique. In order to characterize the strength of turbulence, we measure scintillation index (SI) of estimated channel coefficients. By utilizing the estimated channel coefficients, we evaluate the bit error rate (BER) performance for various configurations, such as single-input single-output (SISO) and single-input multiple-output (SIMO) FSO systems.