COL 10(11), 110603(2012) CHINESE OPTICS LETTERS November 10, 2012
Photon-counting chip-interleaved iterative PIC detector
over atmospheric turbulence channels
Xiaolin Zhou (
±±±
)
∗
, Yandong Yang (
ÀÀÀ
), Yufeng Shao (
´´´
), and Jun Liu (
444
ddd
)
Department of Communication Science and Engineering, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China
∗
Corresponding author: zhouxiaolin@fudan.edu.cn
Received April 14, 2012; accepted June 20, 2012; posted online September 28, 2012
A photon-counting-based iterative parallel interference cancellation (PIC) scheme for free-space optical
communications in the presence of multiple-access interference, shot noise, background radiation, and
turbulence fading is designed. An efficient chip-level iterative equivalent noise estimation algorithm is
also derived. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme can achieve a single-user performance,
bound with the fast convergence property. More importantly, it can eliminate the bit-error rate floor of
the conventional optical code-division multiple-access system with the aid of a relatively short spreading
code length.
OCIS codes: 060.2605, 200.2605, 010.1330.
doi: 10.3788/COL201210.110603.
Free-space optical (FSO) s ystems have re ceived cons id-
erable attention due to their substantial bandwidth, low
power consumption, and high security property
[1,2]
. The
multiple-access interference (MAI) is the primary limi-
tation that will strongly degrade system performance in
the multi-user FSO communications
[3]
.
The optical code-division multiple-access (OCDMA)
has been developed as a promising candidate for high-
rate communications. OCDMA allows multiple users to
share the same media simultaneously. The nonzero cross
correla tio n for conventional non-coherent OCDMA sys-
tems can cause serious MAI
[4]
. Long optical o rthogonal
code (OOC) sequences are required to serve several users
simultaneously, resulting in low bandwidth efficiency.
Moreover, the complexity of multi-user detection (MUD)
is always a serious concern.
A photon-counting-based iterative parallel interference
cancellation (Iter-PIC) for the FSO multi-user commu-
nications is desig ned based on the aforementioned s c e -
narios. Each user can be separated by the user-specific
interleave r, which avoids the complex design of OOC in
OCDMA systems. A log-likelihood ratio (LLR) MAI
Iter-PIC algorithm is derived at the receiver, which con-
siders the shot noise, background radiation, and thermal
noise. The bit-error rate (BER) per fo rmance is eval-
uated over Gamma-Gamma turbulence-induced fading
channels.
The Iter-PIC FSO system structure is s hown in Fig.
1. The system e mploys the on/off key (OOK) modula-
tion and intensity modulated-direct detection technique.
Let k be the user index k ∈ [1, K]. The information
data d
k
= {d
k
(l) , l = 1 , ··· , L
d
} for kth us er is encoded
by a forward error correction (FEC) encoder, generating
the coded sequence c
k
= {c
k
(j), j = 1, ··· , L
c
}, where
L
d
is the information fr ame length andL
c
is the encoded
frame length. The encoded data is interleaved by the
user-specific interleaver Π
k
.
After interleaving, the OOK modulation is employed
to produce x
k
= {x
k
(j) , j = 1, ··· , L
c
}. The symbols
{x
k
(j)} are referred to as “chips”
[5]
, which drive an opti-
cal modulator for transmission over a FSO link, as shown
in Fig. 1(a). The mean photon counts of the transmitted
chips are m
0
= 0 a nd m
1
=
P ·T
c
h·υ
representing “0” and
“1” for OOK modulation, where P, T
c
, υ, and h are the
transmitted power, chip duration, optical frequency, and
Plank’s constant, respectively.
The Gamma-Gamma turbulence-induced fading is con-
sidered. The probability density function (PDF) of chan-
nel c oefficient I
k
is given by
[6]
f
I
k
(I
k
) =
2 (αβ)
(α+β)/2
Γ (α) Γ (β)
I
(α+β)/2−1
k
K
α−β
2
p
αβI
k
,
(1)
where I
k
denotes the channel coefficient between the
kth user laser and the receiving photon detector (PD).
α > 0 and β > 0 are linked to the scintillation index as
S.I. = α
−1
+ β
−1
+ (αβ)
−1
. The knowledge of channel
coefficient I
k
is feasible at the receiver side by channel
estimation
[7]
because of the slow time-varying property of
atmospheric turbulence, with correlation time from the
order of 10
−3
seconds to 10
−2
seconds
[8]
. Moreover, the
channel coefficient remains constant over a number of
signal intervals
[9]
.
Ambient light is an important characteristic of the FSO
systems. In the context o f photon counting, the mea n
number of ambient photo ns in the duration of T
c
is rep-
resented by
[3]
m
a,c
=
W (λ) AΩ
FOV
∆λT
c
hν
, (2)
where Ω
FOV
denotes the receiver field of view (FOV), ∆λ
is the optical filter bandwidth, and W(λ) is the spectral
radiance function.
Figure 1(b) shows that the Iter-PIC rec e iver con-
sists of a MUD block, noise variance estimatio n (NVE)
block, and K a posterior pr obability (APP) decoders
(DECs). Figure 1 shows that the PD is a positive-
intrinsic-negative (PIN) diode. The thermal noise and
shot noise are cons idered
[3]
. The thermal no ise current
variance of PIN is given by
[7−10]
σ
2
T
= 4F
n
∆f
k
B
T
R
L
, (3)
1671-7694/2012/110603(4) 110603-1
c
2012 Chinese Optics Letters