A singular aperture receiver is usually used in a free-space optical communication system. To increase the received optical flux, a larger diameter receiver is preferred, but this approach causes a sharp increase in cost. It also limits the large-scale civil use of free-space optical communications. This paper proposes a technique called aperture averaging weight factor shifting and designs a new type of receiver that can greatly reduce the cost of a free-space optical communication system. This paper offers a comparative analysis of two types of receivers for optical scintillation and proves theoretically that using this new type of receiver does not degrade the performance.