Buffer-Aided Relaying Network With Free Space Optical (FSO) Inter-Relay Links and Radio Frequency (RF) End-to-End Links

摘要

Free space optical (FSO) communication is a fast and reliable technology that can be exploited along the radio frequency (RF) wireless channels to enhance the reliability of the networks without generating interference. Efficient wireless communication protocols can be designed by employing data buffers at the relaying stations. In this work, we propose a novel buffer-aided relaying scheme in which the FSO inter-relay links are employed to improve the selection diversity and the RF links are used to deliver packets from the source to the destination. The theoretical outage probability of the network under the proposed protocol is derived and compared with the well-known maximum link relay selection (MLRS) technique as the benchmark. Monte-Carlo simulations demonstrate that the proposed policy outperforms the MLRS technique and the presented theoretical analysis is correct.