Performance of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing based 60-GHz transmission over turbulent free-space optical link

Abstract

In this paper, radio-over-free-space optic (RoFSO) transmission is investigated for the next-generation wireless networks. Here, the 60 GHz based radio frequency (RF) system is demonstrated using 16-quadrature amplitude modulation with orthogonal frequency division multiplexing scheme. System performance for FSO link is evaluated by modeling the channel with the gamma-gamma fading. The optical spectrum and constellation diagram of the received signals are analyzed. The improvement reported for error vector magnitude is 3.8–0.6% and symbol error rate of 0.03–0.005 for free-space range of 0.2–1 km. Proposed work claims that orthogonal frequency division multiplexing can be helpful for the FSO systems by providing robustness to adverse atmospheric turbulence.