Space Time Coding Over a Multiple-Channel Free Space Optical Link

Free space optical (FSO) communications in the atmosphere are characterized by additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and turbulent fading. We propose a combination of spatial and temporal forward error correction (FEC) coding to instantaneously correct for long-duration fades over a multiple channel link. We simulate this over a turbulent channel and identify the probability of outage of such a channel as the most significant channel parameter.