Performance analysis of MIMO free-space optical communication systems with selection combining

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the outage performance of a multi-input multi-output (MIMO) free-space optical (FSO) communication system with selection combining (SC). Under the assumption of log-normal distributed atmospheric turbulence, we first derive a closed-form outage probability expression, and then demonstrate the achievable diversity order. We further provide Monte Carlo simulation results to confirm the validity of the derived outage probability expression and present the corresponding diversity gains.