Performance analysis of multihop heterodyne free-space optical communication over general Malaga turbulence channels with pointing error

Abstract This work investigates the end-to-end performance of a free space optical amplify-and-forward (AF) channel-state-information (CSI)-assisted relaying system using heterodyne detection over Malaga turbulence channels at the presence of pointing error employing rectangular quadrature amplitude modulation (R-QAM). More specifically, we present exact closed-form expressions for average bit-error rate for adaptive/non-adaptive modulation, achievable spectral efficiency, and ergodic capacity by utilizing generalized power series of Meijer's G-function. Moreover, asymptotic closed form expressions are provided to validate our work at high power regime. In addition, all the presented analytical results are illustrated using a selected set of numerical results. Moreover, we applied the bisection method to find the optimum beam width for the proposed FSO system.