Adaptive MIMO FSO communication systems with spatial mode switching

Abstract

In this paper, we propose an adaptive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) free-space optical (FSO) system with dynamic adaptation between spatial modes of operation. The proposed adaptive system supports three MIMO modes. In the spatial multiplexing mode, the system transmits independent parallel data streams over multiple apertures to increase data rate. In diversity mode, the system transmits coded streams through multiple apertures to extract diversity gains. In hybrid mode, a trade-off between diversity and multiplexing gains is targeted. For each operation mode, we first derive the outage probability for the MIMO FSO system over log-normal turbulence channels. Then, we formulate the design of an adaptive FSO system to select the MIMO mode that yields the highest throughput while satisfying a predefined target outage probability. Extensive numerical results are provided to demonstrate the performance of the proposed adaptive scheme.