On the capacity of ℳ-distributed atmospheric optical channels

In this Letter, closed-form expressions of ergodic capacity, outage probability, and outage rate are derived for an atmospheric optical communication link using intensity modulation and direct detection with unbounded optical wavefront propagating through a homogeneous and isotropic turbulent medium. The optical scintillation of the received signal is modeled with the recently proposed Málaga or M turbulence distribution. By taking advantage of this unifying statistical model, the expressions here presented are valid for all possible irradiance fluctuation conditions, leading to direct relationships between turbulence parameters and link capacity performance.