Subcarrier intensity modulated wireless optical communications with rectangular QAM

The average symbol error rate is studied for subcarrier intensity modulated wireless optical communication systems employing general order rectangular quadrature amplitude modulation. We consider three different turbulence channel models, i.e., the Gamma-Gamma channel, the K-distributed channel, and the negative exponential channel with different levels of turbulence. Closed-form error rate expressions are derived using a series expansion of the modified Bessel function. In addition, detailed truncation error analysis and asymptotic error rate analysis are also presented. Numerical results demonstrate that our series solutions are highly accurate and efficient.