Hybrid RF-FSO System Cascaded with UWOC Link

Abstract

This work presents outage analysis of a hybrid communication system, where radio frequency (RF) and free space optical (FSO) communication links transmit in parallel to the then cascaded underwater wireless optical communication (UWOC) link forming a RF/FSO-UWOC cooperative system. Optical wireless communication (OWC) is being used as a viable communication technology by researchers due to its advantages such as fast speed, cost effectiveness, and highly secure transmission. The proposed architecture connects the terrestrial and the underwater regions to form an end-to-end cooperative system. This hybrid RF/FSO back-haul link makes the system more reliable as the optical link is highly susceptible to weather conditions. The channel models considered are Nakagami-m distributed fading, Double Generalized Gamma (DGG) distributed atmospheric turbulence along with Rayleigh distributed misalignment losses and mixture of Exponential Generalized Gamma (EGG) distributed oceanic turbulence for RF, FSO, and UWOC links, respectively. Results show that outage performance is severely affected due to RF fading, DGG distributed irradiance, air bubble concentration, temperature gradient, and saltiness of water source.