Unified Performance Analysis of MIMO Mixed RF/FSO Relaying System

Abstract

This paper investigates the asymmetric dual–hop multiple input multiple output (MIMO) mixed radio frequency (RF)/free space optical (FSO) decode–and–forward (DF) relaying system. This kind of system can utilize two different fading characteristic channels to reduce the possibility of the system falling into deep fading. In addition, each link of the system adopts MIMO technology to mitigate the disadvantages of fading. In this paper, the closed form expressions of the outage probability, bit error rate (BER) and average ergodic capacity are derived. The approximate expression of the system outage probability considering the pointing error is also derived. Additionally, asymptotic performance for diversity order and diversity–multiplexing tradeoff (DMT) of the system is analyzed and discussed, which provides direct theoretical basis for practical engineering design.