Performance Analysis of UAV-Based Mixed RF-UWOC Transmission Systems

In this paper, we investigate the performance of a mixed radio-frequency-underwater wireless optical communication (RF-UWOC) system where an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), as a low-altitude mobile aerial base station, transmits information to an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) through a fixed-gain amplify-and-forward (AF) or decode-and-forward (DF) relay. The analysis accounts for the main factors that affect the system performance, such as the UAV height, air bubbles, temperature gradient, water salinity variations, detection techniques, and pointing errors. Employing the fixed-gain AF and DF relays, expressions for some key performance metrics are derived, e.g., outage probability (OP), average bit error rate (ABER), and average channel capacity. Moreover, in order to get further insights, asymptotic analyses for the OP and ABER are also carried out. Additionally, for the two relaying systems, we derive analytical expressions for the optimal UAV altitude that minimizes the OP. Simulation results show that the UAV altitude influences the system performance and there is an optimal altitude which ensures a minimum OP. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that the diversity order of the fixed-gain AF relaying depends on the RF link and pointing errors, while the diversity order of the DF relaying depends on the detection techniques and pointing errors.