BER performance analysis of radio over free-space optical systems considering laser phase noise under Gamma-Gamma turbulence channels

This paper analytically investigates a bit error rate (BER) performance of radio over free space optical (FSO) systems considering laser phase noise under Gamma-Gamma turbulence channels. An external modulation using a dual drive Mach-Zehnder modulator (DD-MZM) and a phase shifter is employed because a DD-MZM is robust against a laser chirp and provides high spectral efficiency. We derive a closed form average BER as a function of different turbulence strengths and laser diode (LD) linewidth, and investigate its analytical behavior under practical scenario. As a result, for a given average SNR with normalized perturbation, it is shown that the difference of average BER corresponding to two LDs (with linewidth of 624MHz and 10MHz) under weak turbulence is almost 3 times larger than that under strong turbulence