On the Performance of Mixed FSO/RF SWIPT Systems With Secrecy Analysis

In this article, we consider secure communication over asymmetric dual-hop simultaneous wireless information and power transfer system having one free-space optical (FSO) link followed by one radio frequency (RF) link. We assume that the optical transmitter conveys secure information to the RF receiver through an intermediate relay, which exploits the decode-and-forward relaying technique. The FSO link encounters Malaga (M) distributed turbulence with pointing error, and RF link suffers double shadowed Rician fading. We investigate the consequences of pointing error, atmospheric turbulence, and energy harvesting on the performance of the proposed mixed FSO/RF SWIPT framework. Specifically, we derive the analytical expressions for statistical characteristics such as probability density function, amount of fading, average bit error rate (BER), outage probability (OP), and ergodic capacity. The asymptotic expression for OP is also derived to obtain the diversity order of the system. Based on these results, the physical layer security analysis is carried out, and the analytical expressions for secure OP and strictly positive secrecy capacity are derived. Herein, the two eavesdroppers are considered. In the first scenario, it is assumed that only the FSO link is overheard, while in the second scenario, both FSO and RF links are under simultaneous eavesdropping attack.