Generic evaluation of FSO system over Málaga turbulence channel with MPPM and non-zero-boresight pointing errors

Free space optical (FSO) communication channels are affected by fluctuations in irradiance due to atmospheric turbulence and pointing errors. Recently, a generalized statistical model knows as Málaga (M) was developed to describe irradiance fluctuations of the beam propagating through a turbulent medium. In this paper, an approximate finite-series probability density function (PDF) for composite M turbulence with pointing errors is verified. Considering multiple pulseposition- modulation (MPPM) with intensity modulation and direct detection, specific closed-form expressions for average symbol error rate (ASER) and outage probability are obtained. Moreover, asymptotic expressions for ASER and outage probability over the Málaga channel with pointing errors are presented. Finally, ASER and outage probability expressions are deduced in three turbulence regimes, strong, moderate, and weak. Therefore, simulation results are given to confirm the accuracy of the proposed expressions. The results show that the optimum beam divergence angle is 1 mrad for zero-boresight displacement and 2 mrad for nonzero-boresight at a distance of 1 km. By increasing the range to 5 km, atmospheric turbulence is found to have the dominant effect over boresight displacement. Moreover, the system performance at the optimized divergence angle is studied in terms of transmit power, normalized boresight, and link distance. © 2020 Institution of Engineering and Technology. All rights reserved.