A new switching scheme for hybrid FSO/RF communication in the presence of strong atmospheric turbulence

Hybrid FSO/RF communication systems make use of an RF link with OWC link to achieve higher reliability along with high data rate communication. Both these (OWC and RF) channels are complementary in nature. We propose and analyze a new switching scheme for the hybrid FSO/RF system, in which both FSO and RF links are emphatically activated or deactivated according to the channel conditions. A single threshold level is decided for the Rayleigh-faded RF link, and two threshold levels are defined for FSO link under strong atmospheric turbulence conditions. Closed-form analytical expressions have been obtained for the bit error rate and outage probability for the proposed system.