Free Space Optical Communications via Optical Amplify-and-Forward Relaying

Fading and path loss are the major challenges in practical deployment of free space optical communication systems. In this paper, a cooperative free space communication via an optical amplify-and-forward relay is considered to deal with these challenges. We use photon counting approach to investigate the system bit error probability (BEP) performance and study the effects of atmospheric turbulence, background light, amplified spontaneous emission, and receiver thermal noise on the system performance. We compare the results with those of the multiple-transmitter (MT) system. The results indicate that the performance of the relay-assisted system is much better than that of the MT system in different cases considered. We show that there is an optimum place for the relay from the BEP point of view.