Performance Analysis of Coherent Optical OFDM Applied to UAV Mobile FSO Systems

The Free Space Optical (FSO) communication links is a promising and cost-effective solution for the provision of high data rate point to point communications. Due to their huge bandwidth, license free spectrum and multipath fading mitigation, the FSO links combined with Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) modulation technique provide an ideal communication solution between Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and fixed Ground Station (GS). In order to design a high performance communication link, it is important to characterize the quality of the optical channel with a proper model, considering the interesting challenges of environmental conditions, such as turbulence and visibility conditions. In this paper we are studying the performance of a mobile link among co-moving UAVs, UAV and GS at different fixed altitudes and link ranges via Optisystem simulation platform, in terms of Bit Error Rate (BER), Optical Signal to Noise Ratio (OSNR) and constellation diagrams. An extensive, comparative analysis among different FSO configurations links considering various characteristics of the OFDM modulation, link ranges, Bit Rates (BR) and the atmospherical conditions is provided.