Blind Signal Detection Under Synchronization Errors for FSO Links With High Mobility

We consider the use of free-space optical communication for fast moving platforms such as high-speed trains, where the sampling clock offset is randomly changing, in addition, the receiver does not have any information on the instantaneous channel fading coefficient. By employing multiple samplers at the receiver, we propose a class of sequence detection methods for the case of On-Off keying (OOK) signaling without using any training sequence. First, we study maximum likelihood-based detection, which has a relatively high-computational complexity. Second, by employing generalized likelihood ratio test, we propose a more practical blind sequence detection method of reduced complexity. To further reduce the computational complexity, third, we propose a novel scheme that uses two wavelengths at the transmitter and differential blind detection at the receiver. Fourth, to benefit from diversity gain with this differential scheme, we consider the use of sufficiently different wavelengths along with sufficient spatial separation between the transmitters and/or the receivers, where we propose an efficient blind detection method. The pros and cons of the proposed detection methods are contrasted through numerical results and their processing loads are compared.