RF Lens Antenna Array-Based One-Shot Coarse Pointing for Hybrid RF/FSO Communications

TL;DR

This paper introduces an RF lens antenna array and a novel angle estimator to significantly improve the coarse pointing accuracy in hybrid RF/FSO communication systems, addressing alignment challenges during link acquisition.

Contribution

The paper presents a new RF lens antenna array and a closed-form angle estimator that greatly enhances coarse pointing performance in hybrid RF/FSO links.

Findings

Reduces outage probability by over a thousand times

Improves link acquisition reliability

Enhances coarse pointing accuracy

Abstract

Because of its high directivity, free-space optical (FSO) communication offers a number of advantages. It can, however, give rise to major system difficulties concerning alignment between two terminals. During the link-acquisition step (a.k.a. coarse pointing), a ground station can be prevented from acquiring optical links due to pointing errors and insufficient information about unmanned aerial vehicle locations. We propose, in this letter, a radio-frequency (RF) lens antenna array to increase the performance of coarse pointing in hybrid RF/FSO communications. The proposed algorithm using a novel closed-form angle estimator, compared to conventional methods, reduces the minimum outage probability by over a thousand times.