Performance characteristics of a free space optical communication (FSO) link have been investigated using coherent and partially coherent Gaussian optical beams of wavelengths in the near IR region (785nm to 1550nm). Relatively better performance has been obtained for the partially coherent Gaussian incident light beam compared to the coherent incident beam under moderate and strong atmospheric turbulence conditions. Detailed performance of the FSO link using partially coherent Gaussian beam along with aperture averaging at the receiver have been made. The improvements due to combined effect of partially coherent optical beam and the aperture averaging of the received optical beams are calculated and compared for different values of the aperture widths and wavelengths. Results show that relative improvement in signal to noise ratio and bit error rate performance is more at 1550 nm using partially coherent optical beam.