Misalignment fading effects on the ACC performance of relay-assisted MIMO/FSO systems over atmospheric turbulence channels

The continuous development of internet of things (IoT) technology enables many devices to be interconnected through the external environment. Meanwhile, 5G technology provides an enhanced quality of services with high data transmission rates, requiring IoT implementation in the 5G architecture. Free-space optical communication (FSO) is considered a promising technique that can provide high-speed communication links, so FSO is an optimal choice for wireless networks to fulfill the full potential of 5G technology, providing speeds of 100 Gb/s or more. By implementing 5G features in IoT, IoT coverage and performance will be enhanced by using FSO models. Therefore, the paper proposed and investigated the multiple-input and multiple-output/free-space optical communication (MIMO/FSO) model using subcarrier quadrature amplitude modulation (SC-QAM) and relay stations over atmospheric turbulence channels by log-normal and gamma-gamma distribution under different turbulence conditions. The performance is examined based on the average channel capacity (ACC), which is expressed in terms of average spectral efficiency (ASE) parameters while changing the different parameters of the model. The mathematical formulas of ACC for atmospheric turbulence cases are calculated and discussed the influence of turbulence strength, the different number of relay stations, misalignment effects, and different MIMO configurations.