Performance of Coherent Differential

Phase-Shift Keying Free-Space

Optical Communication Systems
in M-Distributed Turbulence
Hossein Samimi and Murat Uysal
AbstractIn this paper, we investigate the error
rate performance of a coherent free-space optical commu-
nication system with differential phase-shift keying over
M-distributed turbulence channels. In our derivations,
we express the probability density function of M distribu-
tion in terms of a series expansion. The coefficients of this
series only include elementary and gamma functions. For
numerical evaluation, this power series is truncated to a
finite number of terms. An upper bound for the associated
truncation error is provided and used for the convergence
analysis of the series expansion. In the next step, using the
moment generating function approach, we derive a bit
error rate (BER) expression as a generalized infinite power
series and demonstrate that existing BER results in the
literature reported for gammagamma channels and K
channels can obtained as special cases.
Index TermsAtmospheric turbulence channels; Coher-
ent free-space optical communications; Error rate perfor-
mance; M distribution.
I. INTRODUCTION
F
ree-space optical (FSO) communication systems have
recently attracted considerable interest as a high-
bandwidth transmission technique in an unregulated spec-
trum [1]. One of the major performance-degrading factors
in FSO systems is atmospheric-turbulence-induced fading
encountered even in clear weather conditions. Over the
years, a number of statistical models have been introduced
in an effort to come up with a universal channel model
covering all degrees of turbulence from weak to strong fluc-
tations. These include negative exponential [2], log-normal
[3], K [2], I-K [4], gammagamma distribution [5], and
double-Weibull [6], among others. A recently introduced
model is the so-called M distribution [7,8], which is found
to provide a good fit to experimental data and includes
most of the earlier proposed statistical models as special
cases (refer to [8, Table I] to see a complete list of the
derived distributions).
Performance analysis of FSO communication systems
with intensity modulation/direct detection (IM/DD) over
M-distributed turbulence channels has already been
reported in [911]. A viable alternative to IM/DD systems
is coherent FSO systems, which do not require optical
carrier phase estimation [12,13]. Error rate performance
analysis of coherent FSO communication systems employ-
ing a differential phase-shift keying (DPSK) modulation
scheme has been documented in [1417]. Specifically, in
[14], Kiasaleh has derived a bit error rate (BER) expression
in terms of the Kummer confluent hypergeometric function
for coherent DPSK FSO systems over K-distributed chan-
nels. In [15], Niu et al. have evaluated the BER perfor-
mance over K-distributed turbulence channels through the
moment generating function (MGF) approach. In [16],
Tsiftsis has considered gammagamma turbulence chan-
nels and derived a BER expression in terms of the Meijer
G function. Recently in [17], Niu et al. have derived outage
probability and BER for coherent FSO communication sys-
tems with different modulation schemes including DPSK
over gammagamma channels.
In this paper, we present a generalized performance
analysis of coherent DPSK FSO communication systems
over M-distributed turbulence channels that includes the
results in [1417] as special cases. In our derivations, we
first express the probability density function (pdf) of M
distribution in terms of a series expansion. The coefficients
of this series only include elementary and gamma functions
and are easy to compute. For numerical evaluation, this
power series is truncated to a finite number of terms. An
upper bound for the associated truncation error is provided
and used for the convergence analysis of the series expan-
sion In the next step, using the MGF approach [18], we
derive a BER expression as a generalized infinite power
series and demonstrate that existing BER results in
[1417] can be obtained as special cases. Furthermore,
we investigate the asymptotical performance for large
SNR regimes.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows: In
Section II, we briefly describe the M turbulence model
and introduce the channel parameters. In Section III, we http://dx.doi.org/10.1364/JOCN.5.000704
Manuscript received November 26, 2012; revised May 12, 2013; accepted
May 15, 2013; published June 17, 2013 (Doc. ID 180275).
Hossein Samimi is with the Communication Technology Department,
Cyber-Space Research Institute (CSRI), P.O. Box: 14155-3961, Tehran, Iran
(e-mail: hosseinsamimi@csri.ac.ir).
Murat Uysal is with the Faculty of Engineering, Ozyein University,
Istanbul 34794, Turkey.
704 J. OPT. COMMUN. NETW./VOL. 5, NO. 7/JULY 2013 Hossein Samimi and Murat Uysal
1943-0620/13/070704-07$15.00/0 2013 Optical Society of America
derive the MGF of M distribution using an infinite series
representation and present an upper bound for the associ-
ated truncation error. In Section IV, we present our BER
expression and demonstrate its relation to existing results.
In Section V, we present numerical results and finally
conclude in Section VI.
II. CHANNEL MODEL
The M turbulence model [7,8] is based on a physical
model that involves a line of sight (LOS) component
(U
L
), a component that is scattered by the eddies on the
propagation axis and coupled to the LOS contribution
(U
C
S
), and another component (U
G
S
) due to scattering by
off-axis eddies. Following the notation of [7] and [8], let
us represent the average power of the LOS component
and the average power of the total scatter components,
respectively, by = E[[U
L
[
2
| and 2b
0
= E[[U
C
S
[
2
[U
G
S
[
2
|.
Here, E[[U
C
S
[
2
| = 2b
0
denotes the average power of the
coupled-to-LOS scattering component and E[[U
G
S
[
2
| =
(1 )2b
0
denotes the average power of the scattering com-
ponent received by off-axis eddies where the parameter 0
1 represents the amount of scattering power coupled
to the LOS component. As derived in [7,8] the pdf of the
irradiance I is given by
f
I
(I) = A

k=1
a
k
I
k
2
1
K
k
_
_
2

_
_
_
; (1)
where = E[[U
C
S
[
2
| = 2b
0
(1 ), K
v
() is the Bessel function
of the second kind and order v [19, Eq. (8.432.2)], and A and
a
k
are defined as
A =
2

2
()
_

2
; (2)
a
k
=
_
1
k 1
_
(

)
1
k
2
(k 1)!
_

_
k1
_

_
k
2
: (3)
In Eqs. (1)(3), stands for a positive parameter related to
the effective number of large-scale cells of the scattering
process,

= 2b
0
2

2b
0

_
cos(
A

B
) represents
the average power from the coherent contributions,
A
and

B
are the deterministic phases of the LOS and the coupled-
to-LOS scatter terms, respectively, and represents the
amount of fading parameter, being a natural number.
1
In [8, Table I], a list of most of the existing distribution
models for atmospheric turbulence fading and how they
can be generated from the M distribution model has been
presented. For example, the well-known gammagamma
and K distribution can be simply derived from Eq. (1)
by setting ( = 1,

= 1) and ( = 0, = 0, or = 1),
respectively. Moreover, negative exponential distribution
can be derived by setting ( = 0, = 0, ).
III. DERIVATION OF MGF FUNCTION OF M DISTRIBUTION
In this section, we first rewrite the pdf of the M distri-
bution in a suitable form for mathematical tractability in
the ensuing derivations. Defining = (

), we can
rewrite A and a
k
in Eqs. (2) and (3) as A = ()
2
and
a
k
=
k
()
k2
, where and
k
are defined as
=
2()

()
; (4)

k
=
_
1
k 1
_

1k
(k 1)!
_

_
k1
: (5)
We can, therefore, express f
I
(I) as
f
I
(I) =

k=1

k
()
k
2
I
k
2
1
K
k
_
2

I
_
_
: (6)
The modified Bessel function in Eq. (6) can be written in
terms of the generalized power series representation [20,
Eq. (6)], i.e.,
K
v
(x) =

2 sin(v)

p=0
_
(x2)
2pv
(p v 1)p!

(x2)
2pv
(p v 1)p!
_
;
(7)
where v Z, [x[ < . Replacing Eq. (7) in Eq. (6) we have
f
I
(I) =

k=1

k
2 sin[( k)|
_

p=0
[d
p
(; k)I
pk1
d
p
(k; )I
p1
|
_
; (8)
where ( k) Z or, equivalently, Z, and
d
p
(x; y) =
()
py
(p x y 1)p!
: (9)
In practice, some finite value P is used for calculating the
upper limit in the summation term of Eq. (8). Let
~
f
I
(I)
denote this truncated function. It is given by
TABLE I
MEASUREMENT DATA [11]
Condition C
2
n
(m
23
)
2
R
(; ; )
Sunrise 1.2 10
14
0.52 (0.88, 8.1, 4)
Mid-day 2.8 10
4
(minimum value) 1.2 (0.1, 8.1, 4)
1
A generalized expression of Eq. (1) is also given in [7] and [8] with being a
real number, but it is less interesting due to the high degree of freedom of
the proposed distribution [7, Section III].
Hossein Samimi and Murat Uysal VOL. 5, NO. 7/JULY 2013/J. OPT. COMMUN. NETW. 705
~
f
I
(I) =

k=1

k
2 sin[( k)|
_

P
p=0
[d
p
(; k)I
pk1
d
p
(k; )I
p1
|
_
: (10)
Elimination of the infinite terms after the first P 1 terms
results inatruncationerror definedas E(P) = [f
I
(I)
~
f
I
(I)[.
In Appendix A, it is shown that the truncation error E(P)
is upper bounded as
E(P) < exp(I)max
p>P
{c
p
(; k)]

k=1

k
2 sin[( k)|
: (11)
This bound illustrates that the truncation error can be
made arbitrarily small by increasing P. In Fig. 1, the trun-
cation error in Eq. (11) is illustrated for different values
of P. In all curves, the transmitted power is normalized,
i.e., 2b
0
= 1. The channel parameters are set to
(; ; ) = (0.95; 2.1; 2). From Fig. 1, it is observed that
the truncation error rapidly decreases and goes toward zero
with the increasing of P. Values of P as small as 20 are
sufficient to make the truncation error negligible for all
practical purposes. In Fig. 2, the exact pdf and the approxi-
mated pdf are compared for different values of P = 10, 15,
and 20. It is observed that for P = 20, the exact and approxi-
mated pdf provide an excellent match as expected from our
truncation analysis.
Using the proposed series representation of the pdf in
Eq. (8), the MGF for M-distributed I is given by

I
(s) = E[e
sI
|
=

k=1

k
2 sin[( k)|
_

p=0
[d
p
(; k)
_

0
e
sI
I
pk1
dI
d
p
(k; )
_

0
e
sI
I
p1
dI|
_
: (12)
Using theintegral identity
_

0
x
m
exp(bx
n
)dx = ((m1)
n)(nb
(m1)n
) [19, Eq. (3.326(2))], Eq. (12) yields

I
(s) =

k=1

k
2 sin[( k)|
_

p=0
_
g
p
(; k)
s
(pk)

g
p
(k; )
s
(p)
_
_
;
(13)
where
g
p
(x; y) = d
p
(x; y)(p y) =
()
py
(p y)
(p x y 1)p!
: (14)
As will be discussed in Section IV, the presented MGF in
Eq. (13) is particularly suitable for error rate analysis.
IV. ERROR RATE PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS
A. BER Derivation
In DPSK, the information is encoded by phase differences
between successive signal transmissions. For example,
in binary DPSK, the relative phase shifts between succes-
sive signaling intervals are 0 and 180, corresponding to
the information bits 0 and 1. This indicates that the infor-
mation bit 1 is transmitted by shifting the carrier phase by
180 relative to the phase in the previous signaling interval
while the information bit 0 is transmitted by a zero phase
shift relative to the previous carrier phase. At the receiver
side, demodulation is performed based on the phase differ-
ence between the received signals in two consecutive inter-
vals. Deployment of this simple phase comparator over
fading channels is possible if the channel remains constant
over at least two consecutive signaling intervals. This is
easily justified in atmospheric turbulence channels with a
long coherence time on the order of 1100 ms [21]. For ex-
ample, for a 10 Gbs FSO system over a turbulence channel
with a coherence time of 10 ms, the channel remains con-
stant over 10
8
bits. Therefore, for all practical purposes,
15 16 17 18 19 20
-2
0
2
4
6
8
x 10
-3
P
T
r
u
n
c
a
t
i
o
n

E
r
r
o
r
Fig. 1. Truncation error with respect to the number of terms used
in the series representation of the M distribution.
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
-0.4
-0.2
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1
x
P
D
F
: Exact PDF
-x-x-x-: Approximated PDF, P=10
-*-*-*-: Approximated PDF, P=15
-o-o-o-: Approximated PDF, P=20
Fig. 2. Exact pdf of the irradiance fluctuations [given by Eq. (6)]
compared with the truncated pdf [given by Eq. (8)].
706 J. OPT. COMMUN. NETW./VOL. 5, NO. 7/JULY 2013 Hossein Samimi and Murat Uysal
the atmospheric turbulence can be characterized of quasi-
static nature.
Assuming a shot-noise-limited environment and no
phase error, the instantaneous BER (given the instantane-
ous value of irradiance I) of a coherent FSOcommunication
system employing the DPSK modulation scheme is given
by (see [17, Eq. (12)])
P
e
(I) =
1
2
e
SNR
0
I
; (15)
where SNR
0
=
e
AT
s
hv is the average SNR without tur-
bulence effects. Here,
e
denotes the quantum efficiency of
the detector, A is the detector area in m
2
, T
s
is the DPSK
symbol duration in seconds, h is Plancks constant in joules/
hertz, and v is the frequency of the received optical signal
in hertz.
Given the aforementioned quasi-static nature character-
istics of turbulence-induced fading and assuming no phase
error,
2
the unconditional BER can be calculated as
P
e
=
_

0
P
e
(I)f
I
(I)dI =
_

0
1
2
e
SNR
0
I
f
I
(I)dI
=
1
2
E[e
SNR
0
I
| =
1
2

I
(SNR
0
); (16)
where
I
() is the MGF of I, which is given by Eq. (13).
Replacing Eq. (13) in Eq. (16), we have
P
e
=

k=1

k
4 sin[( k)|
_

p=0
_
g
p
(; k)
SNR
(pk)
0

g
p
(k; )
SNR
(p)
0
_
_
:
(17)
When SNR
0
increases, we observe that the term
g
p
(k; )SNR
(p)
0
in Eq. (17) decreases faster than the
termg
p
(; k)SNR
(pk)
0
for > . As a result, for SNR
0
,
we have
P
e;asym
=

k=1

k
4 sin[( k)|
g
0
(; k)
SNR
k
0
; (18)
for the asymptotical case.
B. Special Cases
In this subsection, we show that our derived BER ex-
pression of a coherent DPSK FSO communication system
over an M-distributed turbulence channel coincides with
the BER expressions that have been earlier presented
for K-distributed turbulence channels [14, Eq. (14)] and
gammagamma distributed turbulence channels [16,
Eq. (10), 17, Eq. (12)].
Special Case IK-distributed Turbulence Channels
( = 0, = 0): For = 0 and = 0, we have

= 0; hence
= 1 and = 2(()). Moreover, considering the
condition

= 0, the parameters {
k
] are nonzero only
for k = 1 and given by
1
= 1 = . Hence, P
e
in
Eq. (17) can be rewritten as
P
e
=
1
2()

sin[( 1)|
_

p=0
_
g
p
(; 1)
SNR
(p1)
0

g
p
(1; )
SNR
(p)
0
_
_
:
(19)
Using the identity sin(x) = (x)(1 x) [19, Eq. (6.1.17)],
the BER expression in Eq. (19) simplifies to
P
e
=
( 1)(2 )
2()
_

p=0
_
g
p
(; 1)
SNR
(p1)
0

g
p
(1; )
SNR
(p)
0
_
_
: (20)
To obtain a similar form as in [14, Eq. (10)] in terms of the
confluent hypergeometric functiondefined, weusethefollow-
ing lemma.
Lemma 1: The expression

p=0
g
p
(x; y)SNR
(xy)
0
can be
described in terms of the confluent hypergeometric function
[19, Eq. (9.210/1)] as

p=0
g
p
(x; y)
SNR
(py)
0
=
(y)
(y x 1)
1
F
1
_
y; y x 1;

SNR
0
_
: (21)
Proof: See Appendix B.
Using Lemma 1, Eq. (20) can be rewritten as
P
e
=
( 1)
2()
_

SNR
0
_
1
F
1
_
1; 2 ;

SNR
0
_

( 1)(2 )
2()
_

SNR
0
_

1
F
1
_
; ;

SNR
0
_
: (22)
Using the identity (x 1) = x(x) [19, Eq. (8.331)], we
have (2 ) = (1 )(1 ) and () = ( 1)( 1);
hence P
e
in Eq. (22) simplifies to
P
e
=
( 1)
2()
_

SNR
0
_
1
F
1
_
1; 2 ;

SNR
0
_

(1 )
2
_

SNR
0
_

1
F
1
_
; ;

SNR
0
_
; (23)
which coincides with the BER expression [14, Eq. (14)]
3
presented for K-distributed channels.
Special Case IIGammaGamma Turbulence
Channels ( = 1,

= 1: Replacing = 1 in = E[[U
C
S
[
2
| =
2b
0
(1 ), we have = 0; hence = . Moreover, consider-
ing the condition

= 1, the parameters
k
and can be
written as
k
= (
1
k1
)
k
((k 1)
k1
) and = 2
1

(). Hence, P
e
in Eq. (17) becomes
2
When the phase noise is not neglected, the unconditional BER is calculated
as P
e
=
_

0
P
e
(I; )f
I
(I)f

()dId, where denotes the phase fluc-

tuation, f

() is the pdf of the phase fluctuation, and P

e
(I; ) is the condi-
tional BER. Under the assumption of gammagamma distribution for the
irradiance and a Gaussian distribution for the phase fluctuation, an analyti-
cal BER expression is provided in [22, Eq. (15)].
3
A factor of two is missing in the derivation of the unconditional BER in [14,
Eq. (6)]. This fact has been also reported previously in [15, Section IV.D].
Hossein Samimi and Murat Uysal VOL. 5, NO. 7/JULY 2013/J. OPT. COMMUN. NETW. 707
P
e
=
2
()

k=1
_
1
k 1
_

k
(k 1)!

4 sin[( k)|

p=0
_
g
p
(; k)
SNR
(pk)
0

g
p
(k; )
SNR
(p)
0
_
_
: (24)
Whenwe replace = 0 inEq. (24), only the termcorrespond-
ing to k = is nonzero; hence, Eq. (24) simplifies to
P
e
=
1
2( 1)!()

sin[( )|
_

p=0
_
g
p
(; )
SNR
(pk)
0

g
p
(; )
SNR
(p)
0
_
_
:
(25)
Using the identity sin(x) = (x)(1 x) [19, Eq. (6.1.17)]
and ( 1)! = (), Eq. (28) further simplifies to
P
e
=
( )(1 )
2()()
_

p=0
_
g
p
(; )
SNR
(p)
0

g
p
(; )
SNR
(p)
0
_
_
;
(26)
which is equal to the BER expression presented in [17,
Eq. (12)]
4
for a gammagamma distributed turbulence
channel. Moreover, in this special case, the asympotical
BER in Eq. (18) simplifies to
P
e;asym
=

4 sin[()|
g
0
(; )
SNR

0
=
()
2()
_

SNR
0
_

; (27)
which coincides with [17, Eq. (13)].
To obtain the BER in a form similar to [16], we can use
Lemma 1 and write Eq. (26) in terms of the confluent
hypergeometric function as
P
e
=
( )(1 )
2()()
_

SNR
0
_

()
( 1)
1
F
1

_
; 1;

SNR
0
_

( )(1 )
2()()
_

SNR
0
_

()
( 1)
1
F
1

_
; 1;

SNR
0
_
: (28)
With some simple mathematical manipulations, we can
write Eq. (28) as
P
e
=
( )
2()
_

SNR
0
_

1
F
1
_
; 1;

SNR
0
_

( )
2()
_

SNR
0
_

1
F
1
_
; 1;

SNR
0
_
: (29)
This expression coincides with [16, Eq. (10)].
5
For = 1, M
distribution reduces to K distribution; therefore Eq. (28)
reduces to Eq. (23) as expected.
V. NUMERICAL RESULTS
In this section, we present numerical results based on
our derivations in the previous section. In Fig. 3, we
present the BER of the coherent DPSK FSO system. We
consider the system specifications from [11], in which a
link with a length of L = 1 km and wavelength of =
785 nmhas been considered. For refraction structure index
parameter of the atmosphere C
2
n
, we have C
2
n
= 1.2m
23
and C
2
n
= 2.8 10
14
m
23
based on the measurement
data in [11] (see Table I). Using the formula
2
R
=
1.23C
2
n
k
76
L
116
, we obtain the Rytov variances as
2
R

0.52 and
2
R
1.2, respectively. The set of parameters
(; ; ) can be then calculated through [8, Eq. (48)] and
[8, Eq. (27)] and taking into account that we have imposed
the constraint that is a natural number [11]. To achieve a
target BER of 10
6
, we need an SNR of 37 dB for
2
R
0.52.
The required SNR increases to 54 dB for
2
R
1.2 with the
increasing turbulence strength as expected.
In Fig. 4, for a fixed value of , i.e., for the same family of
irradiance distribution, we plot the BER performance for
different values of the parameters and covering a wide
range of turbulence conditions. It should be emphasized
that ( = 1,

= 1), ( = 0, = 0), and ( = 0, = 0,

and ), respectively, correspond to gammagamma,
K, and the negative exponential distributions. In all cases,
the same normalized average optical power (i.e.,
2b
0
= 1) is assumed. The worst performance is ob-
served for (; ) = (2; 2.1) and (; ) = (2; ), which corre-
sponds, respectively, to the K distribution and the negative
exponential distribution. As an indicator of turbulence
strength, the scintillation index
6
can be obtained as
2
I
=
1.95 and 1 for these cases with the help of [6, Eq. (8)].
The performance improves for ( = 1,

= 1), which coin-

cides with gammagamma distribution. Specifically, to
achieve a target BER = 10
10
for (; ; ) = (5.1; 4; 1), we
20 30 40 50 60
10
-10
10
-8
10
-6
10
-4
10
-2
Average SNR, dB
A
v
e
r
a
g
e

B
E
R
Fig. 3. BER performance for two values of assuming = 8.1,
= 4.
4
Note that in [16], average SNR was denoted as = (12)SNR
0
.
5
The BER expression in [15, Eq. (10)] has some typos, and it does not
coincide with [14, Eq. (14)] for = 1.
6
The scintillation index is defined as
2
I
= (E[I
2
|(E[I|)
2
) 1.
708 J. OPT. COMMUN. NETW./VOL. 5, NO. 7/JULY 2013 Hossein Samimi and Murat Uysal
need an SNR of 32.5 dB; this reduces to SNR = 26 dB
for (; ; ) = (6.5; 6; 1).
Figure 5 plots the asymptotic BER of a coherent DPSK
communication system using Eq. (18). The values of , ,
and

are chosen such that M distribution coincides with

gammagamma and K channels. The asymptotic BER
converges to the exact BER for sufficiently high SNR val-
ues. It is also observed that the rate of convergence of
asymptotic error rate to exact error rate is fast for > .
VI. CONCLUSION
In this paper, we have derived a unified BER expression
for coherent FSO systems with DPSK modulation over
M-distributed atmospheric turbulence channels. In our
derivations, we have first expressed the pdf of M distribu-
tion in terms of a series expansion, which lets us derive
the MGF in a closed form. Using the MGF approach, we
have obtained the BER and demonstrated that the derived
expression includes the previous BER results reported for
gammagamma and K channels as special cases.
APPENDIX A
In this appendix, we present the derivation of the
truncation error in Eq. (13). Using Eqs. (10) and (12), we
have the truncation error as
E(P) =

k=1

k
2 sin[( k)|
_

p=P1
[d
p
(; k)I
pk1
d
p
(k; )I
p1
|
_
: (A1)
Replacing d
p
(x; y) given by Eq. (9), E(P) can be rewritten as
E(P) =

k=1

k
2 sin[( k)|
_

p=P1
(I)
p
p!
c
p
(; k)
_
; (A2)
where c
p
(x; y) and b
p
(x; y) are defined as
b
p
(x; y) =
()
y
I
y1
(p x y 1)
; (A3)
c
p
(x; y) = b
p
(x; y) b
p
(y; x): (A4)
Noting that b
p
(x; y) in Eq. (A3) decreases with the increase
in p, the truncation error can be upper bounded by
E(P) < max
p>P
c
p
(; k)

k=1

k
2 sin[( k)|
_

p=P1
(I)
p
p!
_
:
(A5)
Considering the Taylor series expansion of the exponential
function as e
x
=

n=0
x
n
n!, Eq. (A5) can be simplified to
E(P) < exp(I)max
p>P
{c
p
(; k)]

k=1

k
2 sin[( k)|
: (A6)
APPENDIX B
In this Appendix, we present the proof of Lemma 1.
Considering the identity (x 1) = x(x) [18, Eq. (8.331)],
we have (p y) = (y)
p
(y) and (p x y 1) =
(p x y 1)
p
(y x 1), where p is an integer value
and (a)
n
= a(a 1)(a 2) (a n 1), (a)
0
= 1. Hence,
we have
5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
10
-15
10
-10
10
-5
10
0
Average SNR, dB
A
v
e
r
a
g
e

B
E
R
Fig. 4. BER performance for different values of , , .
5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
10
-15
10
-10
10
-5
10
0
Average SNR, dB
A
v
e
r
a
g
e

B
E
R
Fig. 5. Comparison of exact and asympotic BER expressions.
Hossein Samimi and Murat Uysal VOL. 5, NO. 7/JULY 2013/J. OPT. COMMUN. NETW. 709

p=0
g
p
(x; y)
SNR
(py)
0
=

p=0
()
py
(p y)
(p x y 1)p!
1
SNR
(py)
0
=

p=0
(y)
(y x 1)
(y)
p
p!(y x 1)
p
_

SNR
0
_
py
=
(y)
(y x 1)
_

SNR
0
_
y

p=0
(y)
p
p!(y x 1)
p
_

SNR
0
_
p
. (B1)
Considering the definition of the confluent hypergeomet-
ric function in [18, Eq. (9.210/1)], Eq. (B1) can be rewritten
as

p=0
g
p
(x; y)
SNR
(py)
0
=
(y)
(y x 1)
1
F
1
_
y; y x 1;

SNR
0
_
: (B2)
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