• Current Optics and Photonics
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• v.3 no.5
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• pp.365-373
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• 2019

This paper investigates the performance of a hybrid single input multiple output radio frequency/free-space optics (SIMO-RF/FSO) communication system. Each SIMO-RF link is modeled as an independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) Rayleigh distribution, while the FSO link follows a generalized $M{\acute{a}}laga$ (M) distribution. Considering the fixed gain amplify-and-forward (AF) relay and misalignment errors, novel expressions for the outage probability (OP), average bit error rate (ABER) and average capacity are derived. Numerical results show that atmospheric turbulence and misalignment errors can seriously impair the system performance, and the hybrid RF/FSO communication system using SIMO-RF links can greatly improve system performance. We also analyze system performance under different types of modulation schemes. Numerical results are verified by Monte Carlo simulations.