Designing of hybrid optical fiber/MIMO-FSO system for offering high-speed connectivity to the last mile users

Due to the massive rise in the adoption of user applications having ultra speed along with the evolution of 5G/6G networks and the Internet of Things (IoT) framework, the requirement of ultra transmission rates has raised concerns for service providers and researchers across the globe. Consequently, a high-speed framework has become the necessity of today’s communication network and the research community is carrying out intensive research in this field globally. In this work, we have proposed a hybrid wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) based single-mode fiber (SMF)-free space optical (FSO) link employing multiple input multiple output (MIMO) transmission. The proposed hybrid design supports a channel length of 20 km (SMF) + 1.51 km (FSO) + 20 km (SMF) and we have examined the system performance for supporting a diverse range of optical network units (ONUs). The proposed model has demonstrated promising results for supporting a large number of ONUs at the receiver section while ensuing bit error rate of \(10^{-9}\) ${10}^{-9}$ .