Behavior of Hybrid Optical/RF Channels over Varying Link Distances

This paper investigates the behavior of optical and hybrid optical/RF links over varying link distances. We first describe inclusion of various factors affecting the optical link, such as the atmospheric absorption, beam divergence and atmospheric turbulence. A technique to analyze outage probability of the hybrid link for low density parity check (LDPC) codes is presented. Our results show that the hybrid link can improve outage probability by orders of magnitude over an optical only link. In haze conditions, the hybrid link can extend the coverage distance of an optical only link by hundreds of meters by diverting a small fraction of the data through the RF link.