Multiuser scheduling in mixed RF/FSO relaying with outdated channel estimation

This paper investigates the performance of multiuser mixed radio frequency (RF)/free space optical (FSO) relay network with transmit opportunistic scheduling. The outdated channel information (OCI) on the first relaying hop and its effect on the system performance is also studied. Furthermore, a power allocation scheme is proposed. The considered system includes K sources (users) that communicate with the relay node through RF links and the relay is connected with the destination through an FSO link. In the analysis, the first hop channels are assumed to follow Rayleigh fading model and the second hop channel is assumed to follow Gamma-Gamma fading model with pointing errors. Closed-form expressions are derived for the outage probability, average symbol error probability (ASEP) and ergodic channel capacity. Furthermore, the system performance is studied at high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime. Using the asymptotic results, the power of users and relay are determined to minimize the system outage probability under a total power constraint. Monte-Carlo simulations are provided to validate the achieved exact and asymptotic results.