In recent years, a growing interest has been witnessed in the usage of free space optics (FSO) link for satellite communication (SATCOM) scenarios, as it offers much higher data rates up to gigabits per second (Gbps) compared to existing radio frequency (RF) link. However, FSO links are sensitive to beam scintillation and pointing errors. In this paper, we consider a hybrid FSO/RF communication between ground station (GS) and satellite, where the RF link will act as a backup link to improve the reliability of FSO communication. In addition, we also consider high-altitude platform station (HAPS), which will act as a relay station, between GS and satellite to improve the end-to-end system performance. This has led to the development of space-air-ground integrated hybrid FSO/RF SATCOM networks. We analyse the performance of the proposed hybrid network considering an adaptive-combining-based switching scheme for both uplink and downlink scenarios with and without using HAPS as a relay station. In case of adaptivecombining-based switching scheme, the data is continuously transmitted over the FSO link, while maximalratio-combining (MRC) of RF and FSO links is performed when the quality of FSO link deteriorates. The performance analysis of adaptive-combining-based switching scheme in terms of outage and average symbol error rate (SER) is carried out and the same is compared with the single-link FSO SATCOM and single-threshold-based switching scheme proposed in the literature for hybrid FSO/RF SATCOM. In addition, the performance gain obtained by the proposed adaptive combining scheme over single-link FSO system for different channel conditions is also reported. Further, the asymptotic analysis is also carried out to obtain the diversity gain of the proposed system.INDEX TERMS Adaptive combining, free space optics, high-altitude platform station (HAPS), hybrid FSO/RF, performance analysis.

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This study deals with the performance analysis of adaptive combining-based hybrid free-space optics (FSO)/radiofrequency (RF) system in a terrestrial communication scenario with and without pointing errors. Here, outage probability and average symbol error rate (SER) are used as the performance metrics. Adaptive combining is a switching scheme in which the FSO link is active throughout, whereas the RF link is activated based on the transmission reliability of the FSO link and maximal-ratio-combining (MRC) of RF and FSO links is performed at the destination. The small-scale fading in RF and atmospheric turbulence induced fading in FSO links have been characterised by Nakagami-m and Gamma-Gamma distributions, respectively. In addition, the radial displacement between the beam centre and detector centre, which induces pointing errors, is modelled using Rayleigh distribution. The exact closed form expressions for the outage and average SER have been derived along with their corresponding asymptotic expressions. Diversity gain of the system has also been determined using the asymptotic expressions. Further, the variation in the performance of the system has been analysed with respect to various parameters including link distance, fading severity parameter, average signal-to-noise of the RF link, and the pointing errors parameter.