LAUSR

Abstract This paper evaluates the performance of an energy harvesting based asymmetric radio frequency (RF)/ free space optical (FSO) system with transmit antenna selection (TAS) and received diversity techniques. The source is equipped with multiple transmit antenna and employs TAS to send information to the destination via the relay node. At the same time, the energy-constrained source harvests energy from the relay node through the receive diversity techniques such maximum ratio combining (MRC) and selection combining (SC). Based on this, relay node functions as wireless power transmitting node as well as data receiving node. The RF/FSO channels are subjected to Rayleigh/Malaga (M) distributions with non-zero boresight (NB) pointing error on the FSO link. Thus, the closed-form expression for the concerned system outage probability is then provided. Through this expression, Gaussian–Chebyshev quadrature method is employed to obtained the average bit error rate of the under studied system. The accuracy of the derived expressions is validated through Montel Carlo simulations. At high SNR, the results demonstrate an error floor due to zero diversity order. In addition, the results show that the atmospheric turbulence and NB pointing error significantly affect the system performance with the MRC offers better performance compared to SC.