Hybrid FSO/THz-Based Backhaul Network for mmWave Terrestrial Communication

In this work, a hybrid free-space optics (FSO)/ teraHertz (THz) based backhaul network is considered to provide high-data-rate reliable communication to the terrestrial mobile users (MUs) operating at millimeter-wave (mmWave) bands. The FSO link is affected by atmospheric turbulence and pointing error impairments. At the FSO receiver, both intensity-modulated direct detection and heterodyne detection techniques are considered. The multi-antenna THz link suffers from high path-loss, small-scale fading, and misalignment error. To minimize the effect of back-and-forth switching, soft switching method is introduced at the access point (AP) to select the signal coming through the hybrid FSO/THz link, and a comparison with hard switching method is presented. Selective decode-and-forward relaying is considered at the AP. In this context, we derive closed-form expressions of the individual link's outage probability, end-to-end (E2E) outage probability, asymptotic outage probability, ergodic capacity, and generalized average bit-error-rate. Finally, we study the effect of different parameters such as atmospheric turbulence, pointing/misalignment errors, link distance, atmospheric attenuation/path-loss, fading parameters of the THz and access links, and number of antennas on the network performance. Our results indicate that, with a proper switching method, the joint implementation of FSO/THz links improves the rate/reliability of the backhaul links with limited switching overhead.