Opportunistic Schedule Selection for Multiuser MIMO FSO Communications: A Security-Reliability Trade-off Perspective

Abstract

The security and reliability of free space optical (FSO) communications and the trade-off between the two are the most critical characteristics to emphasize in FSO systems, especially as optical wireless communications continue to evolve. In this work, we investigate the impact of opportunistic transmit aperture selection (TAS) on the security-reliability trade-off (SRT) of the multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) free space optical system. We consider a general scenario in which the FSO system consists of a transmitter side with K users and a single receiver with N apertures communicating over generalized Malaga-M turbulence channels. We derive the TAS combined signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) distributions for the FSO MIMO channel between the transmitting users and the receiver. A statistical analysis of the TAS scheme is performed, where the k th best user with the highest SNR is selected. Based on this analysis, the closed-form expressions for the outage probability, average bit error rate, intercept probability, and SRT are derived. Then, the diversity advantages provided by the channel variations considering the atmospheric turbulence and generalized nonzero boresight pointing errors are further discussed. The results show that the considered TAS significantly improves the security, reliability, and SRT performance and has the potential to solve existing FSO communication problems. Monte Carlo simulations are used to verify the correctness of the numerical results.