Maximum a posteriori probability detection for free-space optical communication

Based on the joint Gaussian distribution of optical signal log-amplitude sequence, an algorithm for maximum a posteriori probability (MAP) detection was proposed to mitigate effects of atmospheric scintillation on the performance of the free-space optical communication. And the bit error rate for the proposed algorithm was simulated. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm for MAP detection based on the joint Gaussian distribution mitigates effects of atmospheric scintillation on the communication performance and leads to a furthest improvement in detection performance, compared with maximum-likelihood symbol-by-symbol detection and MAP symbol-by-symbol detection.