Abstract
A hybrid free-space-optical/radio-frequency (FSO/RF) communication system is considered, with the help of amplify-and-forward (AF) relaying. We consider various weather conditions to investigate their effects on the system's performance. We begin by obtaining the cumulative distribution function and probability density function of the end-to-end signal-to-noise ratio for the AF dual-hop FSO communication system with RF backup link. Then, these results are used to derive closed-form expressions for the outage probability, average bit-error rate, and average ergodic capacity. The results show that the considered system efficiently employs the complementary nature of FSO and RF links, resulting in impressive performance improvements compared to non-hybrid systems.