Performance of Multi-Hop Fso Systems Under Practical Conditions With Malaga Turbulence Channels and Pointing Errors

Free Space Optical (FSO) communication offers a high-capacity solution for wireless networks, but its performance is severely degraded by atmospheric turbulence and pointing errors, particularly in multi-hop configurations. This paper investigates the performance of multi-hop FSO systems operating over Malaga fading channels, incorporating pointing errors and 32-QAM modulation under practical conditions. We derive analytical expressions and conduct Monte Carlo simulations to evaluate key performance metrics, including Bit Error Rate (BER), Symbol Error Rate (SER), and ergodic channel capacity, as functions of hop count and turbulence severity (weak, moderate, and strong). Simulation results show that BER and SER increase exponentially with hops, reaching 10−3 to 10−2 at 5 hops under strong turbulence, while capacity decreases, dropping below 3 bits/s/Hz under similar conditions. The study highlights the tradeoffs between hop count, turbulence conditions, and system reliability, offering design guidelines for optimizing multi-hop FSO networks. These findings underscore the importance of turbulence mitigation and pointing error compensation to achieve reliable high-capacity FSO communication in real-world deployments.