In this letter, we introduce a detection technique based on differential signaling scheme for outdoor free space optical communications. This method requires no channel state information (CSI) and does not suffer from the computational load compared with the conventional receivers, where adjusting dynamically the detection threshold level (either based on CSI knowledge, or by using pilots) leads to increased computational time and reduced link throughput. This letter shows that the performance of the proposed technique only depends on the correlation of propagating optical beams. Especially under highly correlated-channels condition the fluctuation of the detection threshold level in the receiver is significantly small. We also show experimentally that under weak turbulence regime the variance of detection threshold level reduces for the correlated channel.
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