Abstract
With the rapid evolution of communication technologies, high-speed optical wireless applications under the water surface as a replacement or complementary to the conventional radio frequency (RF) and acoustic technologies are attracting significant attention from the researchers. Since underwater turbulence (UWT) is an inevitable impediment for a long distance underwater optical wireless communication (UOWC) link, mixed RF-UOWC is being considered as a more feasible solution by the research community. This article deals with the secrecy performance of a variable gain relay-based mixed dual-hop RF-UOWC framework under the intercepting attempt of a potential eavesdropper. The RF link undergoes Generalized Gamma (GG) fading distribution, whereas the UOWC link is subjected to mixture Exponential Generalized Gamma (mEGG) distribution. The eavesdropper is capable of wiretapping via a RF link that also experiences the GG fading. The secrecy analysis incorporates the derivations of closed-form expressions for strictly positive secrecy capacity, average secrecy capacity, and exact as well as lower bound of secrecy outage probability in terms of univariate and bivariate Meijer’s $G$ and Fox’s $H$ functions. Based on these expressions, impacts of heterodyne and intensity modulation/direct detection techniques along with weak, moderate, and severe UWT conditions due to air bubbles, temperature, and salinity gradients are quantified. To the best of authors’ knowledge, the proposed model is the first of its kind that addresses the secrecy analysis of a temperature gradient RF-UOWC system along with air bubbles, as opposed to the existing models that considered thermally uniform scenarios only. Finally, the derived expressions are verified via Monte-Carlo simulations.
Highlights
Different types of communication strategies have been explored for underwater communication (UWC) systems including acoustic communication (ACOMM) [1], electromagnetic communications [2], optical wireless communications [3], and laser communications [4], [5]
Researchers are paying attention to the development of a dual-hop radio frequency (RF)-underwater optical wireless communication (UOWC) system [28]; the first hop communication occurs above the water surface using RF technology, whereas the second hop uses an UOWC connection to serve the coverage of interest under the water surface
NUMERICAL RESULTS This section illustrates the impact of various system parameters on the secrecy performance of the proposed mixed RF-UOWC system via different numerical examples utilizing the expressions in (15), (23), (29), and (35)
Summary
Researchers are paying attention to the development of a dual-hop RF-UOWC system [28]; the first hop communication occurs above the water surface using RF technology, whereas the second hop uses an UOWC connection to serve the coverage of interest under the water surface These two communication mediums are linked through a relay that performs the required conversion of the RF signal into optical one for underwater transmission. We analyze the secrecy performance of the dual-hop DF relaying systems via developing the expressions for ASC, exact and lower bound of SOP, and strictly positive secrecy capacity (SPSC) in terms of Meijer’s G and Fox’s H functions These analytical expressions are unique and generalized in the sense that the considered dual-hop PDF and CDF for the proposed RF-UOWC system are unique and generalized, according to the authors’ knowledge based on the open literature.
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