Author(s)

Barnet M. Schmidt

Department of Physics and Engineering Physics, Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, USA.

This study develops an optimal performance monitoring metric for a hybrid free space optical and radio wireless network, the Outage Capacity Objective Function. The objective function—the dependence of hybrid channel outage capacity upon the error rate, jointly quantifies the effects of atmospheric optical impairments on the performance of the free space optical segment as well as the effect of RF channel impairments on the radio frequency segment. The objective function is developed from the basic information-theoretic capacity of the optical and radio channels using the gamma-gamma model for optical fading and Ricean statistics for the radio channel fading. A simulation is performed by using the hybrid network. The objective function is shown to provide significantly improved sensitivity to degrading performance trends and supports of proactive link failure prediction and mitigation when compared to current thresholding techniques for signal quality metrics.

Free-Space Optical Networks; Outage Capacity; Hybrid Networks; Performance Monitoring; Fault Management; MIMO; Wireless Networks; Network Management

B. Schmidt, "A Novel Outage Capacity Objective Function for Optimal Performance Monitoring and Predictive Fault Detection in Hybrid Free-Space Optical and RF Wireless Networks," Communications and Network, Vol. 5 No. 4, 2013, pp. 305-315. doi: 10.4236/cn.2013.54038.