This paper presents a novel model for hybrid Free Space Optical / Radio Frequency (FSO / RF) communication system with receive diversity. It is the first time that in a one-hop hybrid FSO / RF system, receive diversity is being used. Also, it is the first time that a one-hop hybrid FSO / RF system is being investigated in Negative Exponential atmospheric turbulence. For the first time, closed-form expression for Outage Probability of the presented system is being derived and verified through MATLAB simulation. It is shown that at low average Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR), FSO system with receive diversity performs better than RF system with receive diversity and almost equal to the proposed system, but by the increase of average SNR, its performance degrades compared with the two other systems. This system has a complex receiver, but it should be noted that the addition of this complexity, significantly reduces power consumption and improves system performance.

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