Practical Switching-Based Hybrid FSO/RF Transmission and Its Performance Analysis

Abstract

Hybrid free-space optical (FSO)/radio-frequency (RF) systems have emerged as a promising solution for high-data-rate wireless backhaul. We present and analyze a switching-based transmission scheme for the hybrid FSO/RF system. Specifically, either the FSO or RF link will be active at a certain time instance, with the FSO link enjoying a higher priority. We considered both a single-threshold case and a dual-threshold case for FSO link operation. Analytical expressions have been obtained for the outage probability, average bit error rate, and ergodic capacity for the resulting system. Numerical examples are presented to compare the performance of the hybrid scheme with the FSO-only scenario.

Effect of dust storms on FSO communications links

“…In order to improve the system performance, RF backup link is needed. FSO/RF systems have been proposed widely in literature and industry as a high reliability connection system [13]. Once the received power drops below this threshold, we use the low speed RF link to keep the connection till the dust severity reduces.…”

Availability of a Hybrid FSO/RF Link While Using the Link’s Diversity for Packet Scheduling

“…Approaches to widen the applicability and improve the performance of FSO links have been taken in the following directions: adjusting signal intensity by increasing its power in case there are adverse weather conditions [1,2], studying and finding ways to increase the transmission angle so that reception is less of a problem, using systems with multiple receivers and multiple transmitters (MIMO) [3,4], and using hybrid FSO and RF links [1,[5][6][7][8][9] and combinations of two or more of these approaches. Also, multiple recent studies address the performance mixed RF/FSO systems where RF and FSO links are used to bridge separate parts of the transmission path, for example, [10][11][12][13].…”

Outage Analysis of Practical FSO/RF Hybrid System With Adaptive Combining

“…A possible solution to improve the FSO link's reliability and availability is to integrate it with a millimeter wavelength (MMW) radio frequency (RF) link, which can achieve data rates comparable with that of FSO link [1], to form a hybrid FSO/RF communication system. One approach is switch-over hybrid FSO/RF scheme, which applies hardware switching between FSO and MMW RF links to make use of their complementary natures (see [2] and references therein). However, this approach will lead to frequent hardware switching between the FSO and RF links [1].…”