On the Effect of Interference and Misalignment Error in Mixed RF/FSO Systems Over Generalized Fading Channels

Abstract

In this paper, the end-to-end performance of a mixed radio frequency (RF)/free space optical (FSO) affected by co-channel interference (CCI), is studied. We consider that the RF link experiences $\eta -\mu $ fading and the FSO link is subjected to atmospheric turbulence, which is modeled by the $\alpha -\mu $ distribution. Also, the statistics of the FSO link is presented for the case of zero and non-zero boresight pointing errors. Furthermore, we assume intensity modulation with direct detection (IM/DD) and coherent demodulation. In particular, we present a closed-form expression for the probability density function of the FSO link, which is then used to obtain a closed-form and an asymptotic expression for the outage probability. In order to quantify the system performance, we utilize this asymptotic result to yield the system’s coding gain and diversity order. Moreover, we have presented analytical expressions for the average bit error rate (BER) and ergodic capacity for the system design. In order to gain more insights, high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) approximations expressions for the BER and ergodic capacity, are also derived. Finally, the analytical results presented in the paper are validated through computer simulations.