On the communication over strong atmospheric turbulence channels by adaptive modulation and coding

The free-space optical (FSO) communications can provide any connectivity need at high-speed. However, an optical wave propagating through the atmosphere experiences the variation in amplitude and phase due to scintillation. To enable high-speed communication over strong atmospheric turbulence channels, we propose to transmit the encoded sequence over both FSO and wireless channels, feedback channel state information of both channels by RF-feedback, and adapt powers and rates so that total channel capacity is maximized. The optimum power adaptation policy maximizing total channel capacity is derived. We show significant spectral efficiency performance improvement by employing this approach. We further show that deep fades in the order 35 dB and above can be tolerated by proposed hybrid communication scheme.