In this article, performance improvement of a free-space optical communication link with spatial diversity is evaluated for coherent (sub-carrier BPSK and sub-carrier QPSK) and non-coherent (OOK and Q-PPM) modulation schemes in an atmospheric turbulence fading channel. Based on Kolmogorov's theory, the link performance characterized by the signal-to-noise ratio or bit error rate is evaluated for both modulation schemes. It is observed that there is performance improvement with the increase in the order of transmit diversity for all the modulation schemes. Sub-carrier BPSK modulation outperforms the other modulation schemes in terms of the minimum signal-to-noise ratio requirement for a given bit error rate. Also, the effect of correlation among different transmitting antenna beams on the link performance is analyzed. Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.