Performance analysis of RoFSO links with spatial diversity over combined channel model for 5G in smart city applications

Abstract

The smart city concept improves the lives of citizens and optimizes the efficiency of city operations, services through the integration of information and communication technology with the help of the internet of things (IoT) and 5G techniques. The bandwidth demand for 5G, smart city, and IoT applications are fulfilled with wireless optical communications. Particularly, radio over free space optical (RoFSO) communication establishes a very attractive choice for interconnecting central base stations with remote antenna units. In this paper, we consider the transmission of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) radio signals with quadrature amplitude (QAM) modulation format through a free space optical link using spatial diversity mitigation technique. The atmosphere is modeled as the combined channel model which takes into account atmospheric attenuation, turbulence, and pointing errors. The atmospheric turbulence and pointing errors are modeled by Malaga, Beckmann, and Rayleigh distributions. The novel closed form BER expressions are derived for the proposed QAM OFDM RoFSO link with spatial diversity. The results are analyzed and plotted for different weather conditions (clear, haze, light fog), turbulence regimes (weak, moderate, strong), misalignment (weak, enhanced), the order of QAM and number of transceivers. The proposed RoFSO system is highly useful for 5G in smart city applications. 2020 Elsevier B.V.