Bit error rate analysis of ground-to-high altitude platform free-space optical communications using coded polarization shift keying in various weather conditions

Abstract

High altitude platforms (HAPs) aided free-space optical (FSO) communication, a future emerging technology for next-generation communication systems. HAP aided FSO communication systems, contributing significantly to data hunger applications. Weather conditions, angle of arrival fluctuations, blockages, and pointing error loss due to the HAP’s hovering state are some of the limitations to establishing an efficient link. In this paper, we proposed for the first time a Ground-to-HAP FSO communication system based on polarization shift keying to improve performance under hovering fluctuations. We also improved the proposed system’s performance by employing BCH and repetition coding schemes. The proposed system’s average bit error rate performance is expressed in closed form, and the results are analysed under various weather conditions such as rain (light and heavy) and fog (light and moderate). The results for coded and uncoded cases are compared. The achieved coding gain is 28.5 dB. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.