Analysis of Jamming Effects in IRS Assisted UAV Dual-Hop FSO Communication Systems

In this paper, we investigate the effects of jamming caused by a malicious unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) on the performance of a free-space optical (FSO) communication system using a legitimate UAV as a relay and utilizing an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) to improve the coverage. We statistically characterize the combined effects of the three impairments on the performance of the considered system: atmospheric turbulence (AT), pointing error (PE), and angle of arrival (AoA) fluctuation of both the UAVs. Incorporating the aforementioned effects, closed-form expressions of the overall average bit error rate (ABER) and outage probability (OP) for the considered system are derived. We also present a comprehensive study of the proposed system by considering different locations of the malicious UAV jammer and IRS and draw some interesting conclusions. Useful insights into the system performance are obtained through the asymptotic analysis. Furthermore, the analytically derived expressions are verified through Monte-Carlo simulations.

Automated summary

This paper investigates the impact of jamming from a malicious UAV on the performance of a FSO communication system using a legitimate UAV as a relay and an IRS for coverage improvement. The effects of atmospheric turbulence, pointing error, and angle of arrival fluctuations are statistically characterized. Closed-form expressions for the overall ABER and OP are derived, and different locations of the jammer and IRS are considered for a comprehensive study. The analytically derived expressions are verified through Monte-Carlo simulations.