Heterogeneous radio frequency/underwater optical wireless communication relaying systems with MIMO scheme

This paper studies a cooperative relay transmission system within the framework of Multiple-Input Multiple-Output Radio Frequency/Underwater Optical Wireless Communication (MIMO-RF/UOWC), aiming to establish sea-based heterogeneous networks. In this setup, the RF links obey κ-μ fading, while the UOWC links undergo the generalized Gamma fading with the pointing error impairments. The relay operates under an Amplify-and-Forward (AF) protocol. Additionally, the attenuation caused by the Absorption and Scattering (AaS) is considered in UOWC links. The work yields precise results for the Average Channel Capacity (ACC), Outage Probability (OP), and average Bit Error Rate (BER). Furthermore, to reveal deeper insights, bounds on the ACC and asymptotic results for the OP and average BER are derived. The findings highlight the superior performance of MIMO-RF/UOWC AF systems compared to Single-Input-Single-Output (SISO)-RF/UOWC AF systems. Various factors affecting the Diversity Gain (DG) of the MIMO-RF/UOWC AF system include the number of antennas/apertures, fading parameters of both links, and pointing error parameters. Moreover, while an increase in the AaS effect can result in significant attenuation, it does not determine the achievable DG of the proposed MIMO-RF/UOWC AF relaying system.