On the Performance of HAPS-assisted Hybrid RF-FSO Multicast Communication Systems

Multicast routing is considered a promising approach for real-time applications to address the massive data traffic demands. In this work, we study the outage probability of a multicast downlink communication network for non-terrestrial communication systems. More precisely, we propose two practical use-cases. In the former model, we propose a high altitude platform station (HAPS) aided mixed radio frequency (RF)/ free-space optical (FSO)/RF communication scheme where a terrestrial ground station intends to communicate with a cluster of nodes through two stratospheric HAPS systems. In the latter model, we assume that the line of sight (LOS) connectivity is inaccessible between the two HAPS systems due to high attenuation caused by large propagation distances. Thereby, we propose a low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite-aided mixed RF/FSO/FSO/RF communication. For the proposed scenarios, outage probability expressions are derived and validated with Monte Carlo (MC) simulations under different conditions.