On the Performance of Multi - Hop Radio and Optical Wireless Relaying Systems

Abstract

Free space optical (FSO) communications systems give higher information rates in the unlicensed frequency spec-trum bands in contrast to conventional radio frequency (RF) wireless communication systems. A multi-hop serial RF, and FSO system is proposed and the link performance for four different scenarios with amplify-and-forward relaying technique is investigated. Based on the signal-to-noise-ratio statistics, we show closed-form expressions for the bit error rate and ergodic capacity for all scenarios. In addition, we examine the exactness and validity of the derived mathematical expressions using the Monte Carlo simulations.