Performance analysis of satellite-to-ground downlink coherent optical communications with spatial diversity over Gamma-Gamma atmospheric turbulence

The performances of satellite-to-ground downlink optical communications over Gamma-Gamma distributed atmospheric turbulence are studied for a coherent detection receiving system with spatial diversity. Maximum ratio combining (MRC) and selection combining (SC) techniques are considered as practical schemes to mitigate the atmospheric turbulence. Bit-error rate (BER) performances for binary phase-shift keying modulated coherent detection and outage probabilities are analyzed and compared for SC diversity using analytical results and for MRC diversity through an approximation method with different numbers of receiving aperture each with the same aperture area. To show the net diversity gain of a multiple aperture receiver system, BER performances and outage probabilities of MRC and SC multiple aperture receiver systems are compared with a single monolithic aperture with the same total aperture area (same total average incident optical power) for satellite-to-ground downlink optical communications. All the numerical results are verified by Monte-Carlo simulations.