On the End-to-End Performance of a Mixed RF-FSO link with a Decode-and-Forward Relay
Abstract In this paper, we investigate the performance of a decode-and-forward relayed mixed radio frequency-free space optical (RF-FSO) dual-hop link. The transmitter to receiver link’s first-hop is a RF channel and the second-hop is a FSO channel. The RF link experiences long-term shadowing and short-term multi-path fading effects, while the FSO channel suffers atmospheric turbulence fading, path loss, and pointing error-induced misalignment fading. The performance of the system is analyzed considering the impact of these parameters. We model the RF link by generalized-K fading distribution and the atmospheric turbulence over the FSO link by the gamma–gamma fading. The expressions in closed form for the outage probability, symbol error rate for the system employing $q$-ary PSK modulation schemes, and the channel capacity of the system are derived. The obtained numerical results are also depicted by numerical plots.