Secrecy Performance of O-RAN-Enabled RIS-Assisted FSO/RF Satellite Downlinks

Abstract

Motivated by the increasing security requirements of next-generation satellite-terrestrial communication systems and the emergence of Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) architectures, this paper presents a secrecy analysis of a novel reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-assisted mixed free-space optical (FSO) and radio frequency (RF) satellite downlink transmission system within an O-RAN-enabled non-terrestrial network (NTN) framework. The inherent broadcast nature of RF transmissions presents significant eavesdropping risks, which serves as the primary impetus for this study. We analyze the combined effects of imperfect channel state information (CSI) and random link blockage within such integrated networks. The impact of discrete phase shift constraints at the RIS is also investigated. Closed-form expressions are derived for three key performance metrics: connection outage probability (COP), secrecy outage probability (SOP), and the probability of positive secrecy capacity (PPSC). Through high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) asymptotic analysis, corresponding asymptotic expressions are obtained, and all analytical results are validated via extensive Monte Carlo simulations. Our findings demonstrate that: (i) Link blockage probability and channel estimation accuracy jointly govern the secrecy performance floor. (ii) Increasing the number of RIS elements enhances physical-layer security by driving both the COP and SOP toward their theoretical lower bounds. (iii) Improving channel estimation accuracy diminishes the eavesdropper’s channel advantage and improves the overall system security. These results offer valuable insights for designing secure mixed FSO/RF satellite-terrestrial systems within O-RAN-enabled NTN architectures that effectively balance connectivity and confidentiality.