Performance analysis of relay-assisted all-optical FSO networks over strong atmospheric turbulence channels with pointing errors

In this study, we consider a relay-assisted free-space optical communication scheme over strong atmospheric turbulence channels with misalignment-induced pointing errors. The links from the source to the destination are assumed to be all-optical links. Assuming a variable gain relay with amplify-and-forward protocol, the electrical signal at the source is forwarded to the destination with the help of this relay through all-optical links. More specifically, we first present a cumulative density function (CDF) analysis for the end-to-end signal-to-noise ratio. Based on this CDF, the outage probability, bit-error rate, and average capacity of our proposed system are derived. Results show that the system diversity order is related to the minimum value of the channel parameters.