Performance Analysis of Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface in a Dual-Hop DF Relay Empowered Asymmetric RF/FSO Networks

Abstract In this paper, the performance analysis of a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) in a dual-hop decode-and-forward (DF) relay empowered asymmetric radio frequency (RF)/free space optical (FSO) systems is presented. The RIS-assisted RF network is subjected to Nakagami-m distribution while the RIS-assisted FSO networks experience Gamma-Gamma distribution in which both atmospheric turbulence and pointing errors are considered. Thus, the closed-form expressions for the system outage probability and average bit error rate (ABER) are derived with limited number of reflecting elements at RIS-assisted RF network and multiple number of reflecting elements at RIS-assisted FSO network. Further, to obtain more insight about the system characteristic, the asymptotic closed-form expressions are derived at high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for the system performance metrics. The results illustrate the impact of the system and channel parameters on the proposed system in terms of atmospheric turbulence, pointing errors under beam width condition, m-fading parameter, and number of reflecting elements. The correctness of the derived analytical expressions is validated via the Monte-Carlo simulations.