LAUSR

Abstract In this paper, we consider a dual-branch system where parallel radio-frequency (RF) link and mixed RF/free space optical (FSO) link are deployed between the source and destination. More specifically, multiple antennas are employed at both transmitter and receiver of mixed RF/FSO link to migrate channel fading. We assume RF links are subjected to Nakagami-m distribution, while FSO links follow exponentiated Weibull (EW) fading channel. Novel expressions for the end-to-end outage probability (OP), symbol error rate (SER) and ergodic capacity with different relay schemes are presented and analyzed. Moreover, the effect of pointing errors on the OP performance is further investigated. Numerical results demonstrate that due to the superiority of spatial diversity, the system performance can be enhanced significantly.