One of the potential solutions to the radio frequency (RF) spectrum scarcity
problem is optical wireless communications (OWC), which utilizes the unlicensed optical
spectrum. Long-range outdoor OWC are usually referred to in the literature
as free-space optical (FSO) communications. Unlike RF systems, FSO is immune to
interference and multi-path fading. Also, the deployment of FSO systems is flexible
and much faster than optical fibers. These attractive features make FSO applicable
for broadband wireless transmission such as optical fiber backup, metropolitan area
network, and last mile access. Although FSO communication is a promising technology,
it is negatively affected by two physical phenomenon, namely, scintillation due to
atmospheric turbulence and pointing errors. These two critical issues have prompted
intensive research in the last decade. To quantify the effect of these two factors on
FSO system performance, we need effective mathematical models. In this work, we
propose and study a generalized pointing error model based on the Beckmann distribution.
Then, we aim to generalize the FSO channel model to span all turbulence
conditions from weak to strong while taking pointing errors into consideration. Since
scintillation in FSO is analogous to the fading phenomena in RF, diversity has been
proposed too to overcome the effect of irradiance fluctuations. Thus, several combining
techniques of not necessarily independent dual-branch free-space optical links
were investigated over both weak and strong turbulence channels in the presence of
pointing errors. On another front, improving the performance, enhancing the capacity
and reducing the delay of the communication link has been the motivation of any newly developed schemes, especially for backhauling. Recently, there has been a
growing interest in practical systems to integrate RF and FSO technologies to solve
the last mile bottleneck. As such, we also study in this thesis asymmetric an RF-FSO
dual-hop relay transmission system with both fixed and variable gain relay.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:kaust.edu.sa/oai:repository.kaust.edu.sa:10754/621943 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Al-Quwaiee, Hessa |
| Contributors | Alouini, Mohamed-Slim, Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Science and Engineering (CEMSE) Division, Ooi, Boon S., Laleg-Kirati, Taous-Meriem, Hanzo, Lajos |
| Source Sets | King Abdullah University of Science and Technology |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
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