New expressions on the performance of a novel multi-hop relay-assisted hybrid FSO / RF communication system with receive diversity

In this paper a novel multi-hop relay-assisted hybrid Free Space Optical / Radio Frequency (FSO / RF) communication system is presented, in which a mobile user is connected to the Base Station via a multi-hop relay-assisted hybrid FSO / RF link with receive diversity. In this structure, received signal at each relay is demodulated and forwarded. This is the first time that in a multi-hop hybrid FSO / RF system, receive diversity is used. Bit Error Rate (BER) and Outage Probability (P_out) are investigated as system performance criteria. New exact and asymptotic expressions are derived for these criteria, and MATLAB simulations are provided to verify the obtained results. For the first time impact of number of receive antennas and number of relays on the performance of such a structure is investigated. Results indicate that proposed structure has low dependence on number of receive antennas; therefore, in the proposed structure use of single receive antenna has the same performance as the multi-antenna, while low complexity and power consumption. The proposed structure shows independent performance at moderate and strong atmospheric turbulence regimes. Hence, it does not require adaptive processing to match itself according to atmospheric turbulence condition, therefore is cost effective and particularly suitable for urban areas that encounter frequent changes in atmospheric turbulence.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1806.02597, arXiv:1806.0226

Performance analysis of a novel hybrid FSO / RF communication system

In this paper, a novel dual-hop relay-assisted hybrid Free Space Optical / Radio Frequency (FSO / RF) communication system is presented. In this structure an access point connects users within the building to the Base Station via a hybrid parallel FSO / RF link, this link is proposed firstly. Parallel combination of FSO and RF links and use of an access point, will increase capacity, reliability and data rate of the system. It is the first time that the effect of number of users on the performance of a dual-hop relay-assisted hybrid parallel FSO / RF system is investigated. FSO link is considered in Gamma-Gamma atmospheric turbulence with the effect of pointing error and RF link is considered in Rayleigh fading. For the first time, closed-form expressions are derived for Bit Error Rate (BER) and Outage Probability (P_out) of the proposed system. Derived expressions are verified through MATLAB simulations. It is shown that the performance of the proposed system is almost independent of atmospheric turbulence intensity, thereby when atmospheric turbulence strengthens, low power consumption is required for maintenance of the system performance. Hence the proposed structure is particularly suitable for mobile communication systems in which a small mobile battery supplies transmitter power. Also the proposed system performance of the system is preferable even at low signal to noise ratio (SNR). Therefore, proposed structure significantly reduces power consumption while maintaining performance of the system.Comment: 8 pages, 5figue

Performance evaluation of a novel relay assisted hybrid FSO / RF communication system with receive diversity

One of the main problems in mobile communication systems is the degradation of Radio Frequency (RF) connection when mobile user is far from base station. One way to solve this problem is to increase the transmitter power, but the mobile transmitter is not able to supply much power. Another way is to use a relay; among relay schemes, amplify and forward is better for long range communications. Amplify and forward relay is not affordable in terms of power consumption and performance, because it consumes a lot of power inefficiently and enhances the noise. Therefore, in other cases, except in the case of long range links, other relay protocols, such as decode and forward, as well as demodulate and forward, are preferable. In this paper, a novel multi-hop hybrid Free Space Optical (FSO) / RF link is presented; it is made up of two main parts. The first part establishes the connection between the mobile user and source base station, and the second part establishes the connection between the source and the destination base stations. In the first part, a mobile user wants to connect to the source base station via a long range link; therefore, a fixed gain amplify and forward relay with multiple receive antennas is used for communication establishment. In the second part, the source and the destination base stations are connected via a multi-hop hybrid parallel FSO / RF link with demodulate and forward relaying. Considering the FSO link in Gamma-Gamma atmospheric turbulence with the effect of pointing error in moderate to strong regime and the Negative Exponential atmospheric turbulence in saturate regime, and the RF link in Rayleigh fading, new closed form exact and asymptotic expressions are derived for the Outage Probability and Bit Error Rate of the proposed structure. Derived expressions are verified with MATLAB simulations

Ergodic Sum Rate Analysis of UAV-Based Relay Networks with Mixed RF-FSO Channels

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based communications is a promising new technology that can add a wide range of new capabilities to the current network infrastructure. Given the flexibility, cost-efficiency, and convenient use of UAVs, they can be deployed as temporary base stations (BSs) for on-demand situations like BS overloading or natural disasters. In this work, a UAV-based communication system with radio frequency (RF) access links to the mobile users (MUs) and a free-space optical (FSO) backhaul link to the ground station (GS) is considered. In particular, the RF and FSO channels in this network depend on the UAV's positioning and (in)stability. The relative position of the UAV with respect to the MUs impacts the likelihood of a line-of-sight (LOS) connection in the RF link and the instability of the hovering UAV affects the quality of the FSO channel. Thus, taking these effects into account, we analyze the end-to-end system performance of networks employing UAVs as buffer-aided (BA) and non-buffer-aided (non-BA) relays in terms of the ergodic sum rate. Simulation results validate the accuracy of the proposed analytical derivations and reveal the benefits of buffering for compensation of the random fluctuations caused by the UAV's instability. Our simulations also show that the ergodic sum rate of both BA and non-BA UAV-based relays can be enhanced considerably by optimizing the positioning of the UAV. We further study the impact of the MU density and the weather conditions on the end-to-end system performance

Resource Allocation for Mixed RF and Hybrid RF/FSO Relaying

In this paper, we consider a mixed RF and hybrid RF/FSO system where several mobile users transmit their data over an RF link to a relay node (e.g. a small cell base station) and the relay forwards the information to a destination (e.g. a macro cell base station) over a hybrid RF/FSO backhaul link. The relay and the destination employ multiple antennas for transmission and reception over the RF links while each mobile user has a single antenna. The RF links are full-duplex with respect to the FSO link and half-duplex with respect to each other, i.e., either the user-relay RF link or the relay-destination RF link is active. For this communication setup, we derive the optimal resource allocation policy for sharing the RF bandwidth resource between the RF links. Our numerical results show the effectiveness of the proposed communication architecture and resource allocation policy, and their superiority compared to existing schemes which employ only one type of backhaul link

Optical Communication in Space: Challenges and Mitigation Techniques

In recent years, free space optical communication has gained significant importance owing to its unique features: large bandwidth, license-free spectrum, high data rate, easy and quick deployability, less power and low mass requirements. FSO communication uses the optical carrier in the near infrared band to establish either terrestrial links within the Earth's atmosphere or inter-satellite or deep space links or ground-to-satellite or satellite-to-ground links. However, despite the great potential of FSO communication, its performance is limited by the adverse effects viz., absorption, scattering, and turbulence of the atmospheric channel. This paper presents a comprehensive survey on various challenges faced by FSO communication system for ground-to-satellite or satellite-to-ground and inter-satellite links. It also provides details of various performance mitigation techniques in order to have high link availability and reliability. The first part of the paper will focus on various types of impairments that pose a serious challenge to the performance of optical communication system for ground-to-satellite or satellite-to-ground and inter-satellite links. The latter part of the paper will provide the reader with an exhaustive review of various techniques both at physical layer as well as at the other layers i.e., link, network or transport layer to combat the adverse effects of the atmosphere. It also uniquely presents a recently developed technique using orbital angular momentum for utilizing the high capacity advantage of the optical carrier in case of space-based and near-Earth optical communication links. This survey provides the reader with comprehensive details on the use of space-based optical backhaul links in order to provide high-capacity and low-cost backhaul solutions.Comment: 41 pages, 13 Figures and 8 Tables. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1506.0483

Aeronautical Ad Hoc Networking for the Internet-Above-The-Clouds

The engineering vision of relying on the ``smart sky" for supporting air traffic and the ``Internet above the clouds" for in-flight entertainment has become imperative for the future aircraft industry. Aeronautical ad hoc Networking (AANET) constitutes a compelling concept for providing broadband communications above clouds by extending the coverage of Air-to-Ground (A2G) networks to oceanic and remote airspace via autonomous and self-configured wireless networking amongst commercial passenger airplanes. The AANET concept may be viewed as a new member of the family of Mobile ad hoc Networks (MANETs) in action above the clouds. However, AANETs have more dynamic topologies, larger and more variable geographical network size, stricter security requirements and more hostile transmission conditions. These specific characteristics lead to more grave challenges in aircraft mobility modeling, aeronautical channel modeling and interference mitigation as well as in network scheduling and routing. This paper provides an overview of AANET solutions by characterizing the associated scenarios, requirements and challenges. Explicitly, the research addressing the key techniques of AANETs, such as their mobility models, network scheduling and routing, security and interference are reviewed. Furthermore, we also identify the remaining challenges associated with developing AANETs and present their prospective solutions as well as open issues. The design framework of AANETs and the key technical issues are investigated along with some recent research results. Furthermore, a range of performance metrics optimized in designing AANETs and a number of representative multi-objective optimization algorithms are outlined

Free Space Optical Communication: Challenges and Mitigation Techniques

In recent years, free space optical (FSO) communication has gained significant importance owing to its unique features: large bandwidth, license free spectrum, high data rate, easy and quick deployability, less power and low mass requirement. FSO communication uses optical carrier in the near infrared (IR) and visible band to establish either terrestrial links within the Earths atmosphere or inter-satellite or deep space links or ground to satellite or satellite to ground links. However, despite of great potential of FSO communication, its performance is limited by the adverse effects (viz., absorption, scattering and turbulence) of the atmospheric channel. Out of these three effects, the atmospheric turbulence is a major challenge that may lead to serious degradation in the bit error rate (BER) performance of the system and make the communication link infeasible. This paper presents a comprehensive survey on various challenges faced by FSO communication system for both terrestrial and space links. It will provide details of various performance mitigation techniques in order to have high link availability and reliability of FSO system. The first part of the paper will focus on various types of impairments that poses a serious challenge to the performance of FSO system for both terrestrial and space links. The latter part of the paper will provide the reader with an exhaustive review of various techniques used in FSO system both at physical layer as well as at the upper layers (transport, network or link layer) to combat the adverse effects of the atmosphere. Further, this survey uniquely offers the current literature on FSO coding and modulation schemes using various channel models and detection techniques. It also presents a recently developed technique in FSO system using orbital angular momentum to combat the effect of atmospheric turbulence.Comment: 28 pages, 13 figures and 8 table

A Contemporary Survey on Free Space Optical Communication: Potential, Technical Challenges, Recent Advances and Research Direction

Optical wireless communication (OWC) covering an ultra-wide range of unlicensed spectrum has emerged as an extent efficient solution to mitigate conventional RF spectrum scarcity ranging from communication distances from nm to several kilometers. Free space optical (FSO) systems operating near IR (NIR) band in OWC links has received substantial attention for enormous data transmission between fixed transceivers covering few kilometers path distance due to high optical bandwidth and higher bit rate as well. Despite the potential benefits of FSO technology, its widespread link reliability suffers especially in the long-range deployment due to atmospheric turbulence, cloud induced fading, some other environmental factors such as fog, aerosol, temperature variations, storms, heavy rain, cloud, pointing error, and scintillation. FSO has the potential to offloading massive traffic demands from RF networks, consequently the combined application of FSO/RF and radio over FSO (RoFSO) systems is regarded as an excellent solution to support 5G and beyond for improving the limitations of an individual system. This survey presents the overview of several key technologies and implications of state-of-the-art criteria in terms of spectrum reuse, classification, architecture and applications are described for understanding FSO. This paper provides principle, significance, demonstration, and recent technological development of FSO technology among different appealing optical wireless technologies. The opportunities in the near future, the potential challenges that need to be addressed to realize the successful deployment of FSO schemes are outlined.Comment: 59 pages, 14 figure

Performance Analysis of Relay-Assisted OWC Over Foggy Channel with Pointing Error

Signal fading due to atmospheric channel impairments and pointing error is a major bottleneck for the performance of optical wireless communication (OWC). In this paper, we consider an amplify-and-forward (AF) optical relaying to enhance the performance of the OWC system with a negligible line-of-sight (LOS) link under the combined effect of fog and pointing error. We analyze the end-to-end performance of the relay-assisted system, which consists of complicated probability distribution functions. We derive analytical expressions of the outage probability, average signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and ergodic rate in terms of OWC system parameters. We also develop an exact integral-form expression of these performance metrics using the half-harmonic mean of individual SNRs to validate the tightness of the derived analytical expressions. The numerical and simulation analysis shows that the proposed dual-hop relaying has significant performance improvement when comparing to the direct transmission over considered channel impairments. Compared to the direct transmission, the relay-assisted system requires almost $30$ times less transmission power to achieve the same outage probability. The considered system also provides a significant gain in the average SNR and ergodic rate for practical scenarios of OWC deployment.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure