Dual-Hop Full-Duplex DF Relay Channel with Parallel Hybrid RF/FSO Links

In this paper, we carry out a performance analysis of a full-duplex (FD) relaying system consisting of parallel hybrid radio frequency (RF)/free-space optical (FSO) communication links. The RF links are hampered by the residual self-interference (RSI), due to the FD relaying operation, along with the in-phase and quadrature-phase imbalance (IQI) effect, due to imperfections at the RF nodes’ front-ends. The parallel FSO links, of the dual-hop configuration, are influenced by the joint effects of atmospheric turbulence and pointing errors. The performance of the dual-hop FD system with parallel hybrid RF/FSO links, operating under a hard-switching scheme, is evaluated in terms of the outage probability. Analytical closed-form expressions are derived for both RF and FSO subsystems as well as for the overall dual-hop hybrid system. The presented numerical results show the significant performance gains obtained by the exploitation of parallel RF/FSO links in an FD relaying channel under various operating conditions. Finally, the derived analytical results are verified by Monte Carlo simulations.© (2021) IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works