The exponential increase in the number of mobile users, coupled with the strong demand for high-speed data services results in a significant growth in the required cellular backhaul capacity. Optimizing the cost efficiency while increasing the capacity is becoming a key challenge to the cellular backhaul. It refers to connections between base stations and mobile switching nodes over a variety of transport technologies such as copper, optical fibers, and radio links. These traditional transmission technologies are either expensive, or cannot provide high data rates. This work is focused on the opportunities of free-space-optical (FSO) technology in next generation cellular back- haul. FSO is a cost effective and wide bandwidth solution as compared with the traditional radio-frequency (RF) transmission. Moreover, due to its ease of deployment, license-free operation, high transmission security, and insensitivity to interference, FSO links are becoming an attractive solution for next generation cellular networks. However, the widespread deployment of FSO links is hampered by the atmospheric turbulence-induced fading, weather conditions, and pointing errors. Increasing the reliability of FSO systems, while still exploiting their high data rate communications, is a key requirement in the deployment of an FSO-based backhaul. Therefore, the aim of this work is to provide different approaches to address these technical challenges. In this context, investigation of hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) protocols from an information-theoretic perspective is undertaken. Moreover, performance analysis of asymmetric RF/FSO dual-hop systems is studied. In such system models, multiple RF users can be multiplexed and sent over the FSO link. More specifically, the end-to-end performance metrics are presented in closed-form. This also has increased the interest to study the performance of dual-hop mixed FSO/RF systems, where the FSO link is used as a multicast channel that serves different RF users. Having such interesting results motivates further the analysis of dual-hop FSO fixed-gain relaying communication systems, and exact closed-form performance metrics are presented in terms of the bivariate H-Fox function. This model is further enhanced through the deployment of a multihop FSO relaying system as an efficient technique to mitigate the turbulence-induced fading as well as pointing errors.

Generalized fading has been an imminent part and parcel of wireless communications. It not only characterizes the wireless channel appropriately but also allows its utilization for further performance analysis of various types of wireless communication systems. Under the umbrella of generalized fading channels, a unified performance analysis of a free-space optical (FSO) link over the Malaga (M) atmospheric turbulence channel that accounts for pointing errors and both types of detection techniques (i.e. indirect modulation/direct detection (IM/DD) as well as heterodyne detection) is presented. Specifically, unified exact closed-form expressions for the probability density function (PDF), the cumulative distribution function (CDF), the moment generating function (MGF), and the moments of the end-to-end signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of a single link FSO transmission system are presented, all in terms of the Meijer's G function except for the moments that is in terms of simple elementary functions. Then capitalizing on these unified results, unified exact closed-form expressions for various performance metrics of FSO link transmission systems are offered, such as, the outage probability (OP), the higher-order amount of fading (AF), the average error rate for binary and M-ary modulation schemes, and the ergodic capacity (except for IM/DD technique, where closed-form lower bound results are presented), all in terms of Meijer's G functions except for the higher-order AF that is in terms of simple elementary functions. Additionally, the asymptotic results are derived for all the expressions derived earlier in terms of the Meijer's G function in the high SNR regime in terms of simple elementary functions via an asymptotic expansion of the Meijer's G function. Furthermore, new asymptotic expressions for the ergodic capacity in the low as well as high SNR regimes are derived in terms of simple elementary functions via utilizing moments. All the presented results are verified via computer-based Monte-Carlo simulations. Besides addressing the pointing errors with zero boresight effects as has been addressed above, a unified capacity analysis of a FSO link that accounts for nonzero boresight pointing errors and both types of detection techniques (i.e. heterodyne detection as well as IM/DD) is also addressed. Specifically, an exact closed-form expression for the moments of the end-to-end SNR of a single link FSO transmission system is presented in terms of well-known elementary functions. Capitalizing on these new moments expressions, approximate and simple closed-form results for the ergodic capacity at high and low SNR regimes are derived for lognormal (LN), Rician-LN (RLN), and M atmospheric turbulences. All the presented results are verified via computer-based Monte-Carlo simulations. Based on the fact that FSO links are cost-effective, license-free, and can provide even higher bandwidths compared to the traditional radio-frequency (RF) links, the performance analysis of a dual-hop relay system composed of asymmetric RF and FSO links is presented. This is complemented by the performance analysis of a dual-branch transmission system composed of a direct RF link and a dual-hop relay composed of asymmetric RF and FSO links. The performance of the later scenario is evaluated under the assumption of the selection combining (SC) diversity and the maximal ratio combining (MRC) schemes. RF links are modeled by Rayleigh fading distribution whereas the FSO link is modeled by a unified GG fading distribution. More specifically, in this work, new exact closed-form expressions for the PDF, the CDF, the MGF, and the moments of the end-to-end SNR are derived. Capitalizing on these results, new exact closed-form expressions for the OP, the higher-order AF, the average error rate for binary and M-ary modulation schemes, and the ergodic capacity are offered. Cognitive radio networks (CRN) have also proved to improve the performance of wireless communication systems and hence based on this, the hybrid system analyzed above is extended with CRN technology wherein the outage and error performance analysis of a dual-hop transmission system composed of asymmetric RF channel cascaded with a FSO link is presented. For the RF link, an underlay cognitive network is considered where the secondary users share the spectrum with licensed primary users. Indoor femtocells act as a practical example for such networks. Specifically, it is assumed that the RF link applies power control to maintain the interference at the primary network below a predetermined threshold. While the RF channel is modeled by the Rayleigh fading distribution, the FSO link is modeled by a unified Gamma-Gamma turbulence distribution. The FSO link accounts for pointing errors and both types of detection techniques (i.e. heterodyne detection as well as IM/DD). With this model, a new exact closed-form expression is derived for the OP and the error rate of the end-to-end SNR of these systems in terms of the Meijer's G function and the Fox's H functions under amplify-and-forward relay schemes. All new analytical results are verified via computer-based Monte-Carlo simulations and are illustrated by some selected numerical results.

Data Centers (DCs) have become an intrinsic element of emerging technologies such as big data, artificial intelligence, cloud services; all of which entails interconnected and sophisticated computing and storage resources. Recent studies of conventional data center networks (DCNs) revealed two key challenges: a biased distribution of inter-rack traffic and unidentified flow classes: delay sensitive mice flows (MFs) and throughput-hungry elephant flows (EFs). Unfortunately, existing DCN topologies support only uniform distribution of capacities, provide limited bandwidth flexibilities and lacks of efficient flow classification mechanism. Fortunately, wireless DCs can leverage wireless communication emerging technologies, such as multi-terabit free-space optic (FSO), to provide flexible and reconfigurable DCN topologies. It is worth noting that indoor FSO links are less vulnerable to outdoor FSO channel impairments. Consequently, indoor FSO links are more robust and can offer high bandwidths with long stability, which can further be enhanced with wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) methods. In this thesis, we alleviate the bandwidth inefficiency by FSO links that have the desired agility by allocating the transmission powers to adapt link capacity for dynamically changing traffic conditions, and to reduce the maintenance costs and overhead. While routing the two classes along the same path causes unpleasant consequences, the DC researchers proposed traffic management solutions to treat them separately. However, the solutions either suffer from packet reordering and high queuing delay, or lack of accurate visibility and estimation on end-to-end path status. Alternatively, we leverage WDM to design elastic network topologies (i.e., part of the wavelengths are assigned to route MFs and the remaining for EFs). Since bandwidth demands can be lower than available capacity of WDM channels, we use traffic grooming to aggregate multiple flows into a larger flow and to enhance the link utilization. On the other hand, to reap the benefits of the proposed WDM isolated topology, an accurate and fast EF detection mechanism is necessary. Accordingly, we propose a scheme that uses TCP communication behavior and collect indicative packets for its flow classification algorithm, it demonstrates perfect flow classification accuracy, and is in order of magnitudes faster than existing solutions with low communication and computation overhead.

Approved for public release, distribution is unlimited / This thesis sought to design and implement a low-cost, portable, Free-Space Optics (FSO) communications device for Ethernet applications. Under some circumstances such a device would have utility at a Combat Operations Center (COC), a Field Artillery Position, or wherever else fiber optic cable is used in garrison or field. The design was based on commercial off the shelf components originally designed for fiber optic applications. Based on a 155 megabits per second (Mbps) media converter, the design used two fiber optic transceivers, coupled to collimating lenses to pass data over free-space. Sustained data rate of 100 Mbps was achieved with full network functionality on the optical bench with a low-power (0.5mW) laser diode transmitter without focusing optics on the receiver. The laser diode power(mounted on device), was measured with acceptable losses up to 300 ft during testing using a photodiode with focusing optics. The findings indicate that the system with proper collecting optics could be optimized for free-space communication at short to moderate ranges. / Captain, United States Marine Corps