Hybrid FSO/RF-FSO Systems over Generalized Málaga Distributed Channels with Pointing Errors

The combined effect of Malaga distributed atmospheric turbulence and pointing errors on the performance of a hybrid free-space optical (FSO)/ radio-frequency (RF)-FSO communication system is presented and analyzed in this paper. We considered three performance metrics, namely, outage probability, average bit error rate (BER) and average capacity. For each of the performance metrics, closed-form expressions are derived in terms of the Meijer’s G function, analytical results are validated by Monte Carlo simulations and numerical values of the metrics are plotted for different channel conditions. Compared to a single FSO link or a single RF-FSO link, the proposed adaptive hybrid system achieves reduced outage probability, reduced BER and enhanced channel capacity at the cost of extra hardware.