Abstract

Integrating high altitude platforms (HAPs) and free space optical (FSO) communications is a promising solution to establish high data rate aerial links for the next generation wireless networks. However, practical limitations such as pointing errors and angle-of-arrival (AOA) fluctuations of the optical beam due to the orientation deviations of hovering HAPs make it challenging to implement HAP-based FSO links. For a ground-to-HAP FSO link, tractable, closed-form statistical channel models are derived in this article to simplify optimal design of such systems. The proposed models include the combined effects of atmospheric turbulence regimes (i.e., log-normal and gamma-gamma), pointing error induced geometrical loss, pointing jitter variance caused by beam wander, detector aperture size, beam-width, and AOA fluctuations of the received optical beam. The analytical expressions are corroborated by performing Monte--Carlo simulations. Furthermore, closed-form expressions for the outage probability of the considered link under different turbulence regimes are derived. Detailed analysis is carried out to optimize the transmitted laser beam and the field-of-view of the receiver for minimizing outage probability under different channel conditions. The obtained analytical results can be applied to finding the optimal parameter values and designing ground-to-HAP FSO links without resorting to time-consuming simulations.

Multiple HAPS-based space-air-ground network with FSO communication: a performance analysis

Deepshikha Singh, R. Swaminathan, and Anh. T. Pham
Appl. Opt. 63(9) 2362-2375 (2024)

High-Altitude Platform for Free-Space Optical Communication: Performance Evaluation and Reliability Analysis

Manish Sharma, D. Chadha, and Vinod Chandra
J. Opt. Commun. Netw. 8(8) 600-609 (2016)

M-ary phase-shift keying-based single-input-multiple-output free space optical communication system with pointing errors over a gamma–gamma fading channel

Suman Malik and Prasant Kumar Sahu
Appl. Opt. 59(1) 59-67 (2020)

Outage capacity of FSO link with pointing errors and link blockage

Goran T. Djordjevic, Milica I. Petkovic, Miodrag Spasic, and Dragan S. Antic
Opt. Express 24(1) 219-230 (2016)

Performance of modulating retro-reflector-assisted ground-HAP-satellite uplink laser communication system

Xuewen Jiang, Xingyue Guo, and Yi Wang
Appl. Opt. 62(36) 9502-9511 (2023)