On the Improved Performance of Luby Transform Codes over Selective Repeat ARQ in Turbulent Free Space Optical Links

Free Space Optical (FSO) links are capable of offering high data transfer rates, secure and low interference links for connectivity as a last mile solution. However, atmospheric turbulence can degrade the performance for distances over 1 km. This degradation is in the form of packet loss and hence drop in the error performance. Error Control Coding (ECC) can be used to mitigate the effects of the atmospheric turbulence. In this paper we prove analytically and verify through simulations that Luby Transform(LT) Codes show an improved performance over Automatic Repeat Request(ARQ) schemes for FSO transmission. FSO systems are limited by the safety limits of the input power to the laser transmitter. A notable contribution in this paper is that we prove that this improvement with LT codes is within Maximum Permissible Exposure (MPE) limit for an FSO link for a BER performance of 10^-5.