Performance of non-line-of-sight ultraviolet communication receiver in ISI channel

The performance of non-line-of-sight (NLOS) ultraviolet (UV) communication receiver has been analyzed under an assumption of no inter-symbol interference (ISI) in the literature. However, ISI may become detrimental when the data rate increases in a multiple scattering UV channel. We consider relatively high data rate and develop a performance model with the ISI effect due to channel delay spread. Both analytical derivation and newly reported experimental results on impulse response and path loss are introduced and incorporated. The results reveal the close connection between bit error rate (BER) performance and data rate in different transmit/receive geometry, and the power penalty compared with that of an ISI-free system.