A blind detection scheme based on modified wavelet denoising algorithm for wireless optical communications

•A blind detection scheme for WOC is proposed.•An optimal threshold is obtained under maximum a posteriori probability criterion.•Better performance than that of conventional blind detection algorithm.

This paper investigates a detection scheme without channel state information for wireless optical communication (WOC) systems in turbulence induced fading channel. The proposed scheme can effectively diminish the additive noise caused by background radiation and photodetector, as well as the intensity scintillation caused by turbulence. The additive noise can be mitigated significantly using the modified wavelet threshold denoising algorithm, and then, the intensity scintillation can be attenuated by exploiting the temporal correlation of the WOC channel. Moreover, to improve the performance beyond that of the maximum likelihood decision, the maximum a posteriori probability (MAP) criterion is considered. Compared with conventional blind detection algorithm, simulation results show that the proposed detection scheme can improve the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) performance about 4.38 dB while the bit error rate and scintillation index (SI) are 1×10−6 and 0.02, respectively.