Performance Analysis of a Three-Hop Heterogeneous Space–Air–Sea Communication System with Adaptive Combining for Mixed FSO/RF and UWOC Transmission

To meet the growing demand for reliable space–air–sea-integrated communications and underwater information backhaul, this paper proposes and analyzes a three-hop heterogeneous space–air–sea communication system consisting of a satellite, a high-altitude platform (HAP), a sea-surface buoy, and an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV). Specifically, the satellite-to-HAP link employs free-space optical (FSO) transmission, the HAP-to-sea-surface buoy link adopts mixed FSO/radio-frequency (RF) transmission, and the sea-surface buoy-to-AUV link utilizes underwater wireless optical communication (UWOC). To enhance the reliability of the HAP-to-sea-surface buoy link in complex atmospheric and maritime environments, a threshold-based adaptive combining scheme for mixed FSO/RF transmission is designed. Meanwhile, nonzero-boresight pointing error models are incorporated into the FSO and UWOC links to characterize practical link misalignment. Based on the proposed system model, analytical expressions for the end-to-end bit error rate (BER) are derived and validated through Monte Carlo simulations. The numerical results show that the proposed adaptive combining scheme achieves better BER performance than conventional dual-hop and hard-switching schemes. In addition, the effects of pointing errors, underwater turbulence, underwater transmission distance, shadowed fading, detection techniques, and modulation schemes on the system BER performance are further investigated. This work provides theoretical guidance for reliable cross-domain heterogeneous transmission in future space–air–sea integrated communication systems.