Channel modeling and noise analysis for laser intersatellite links (LISLs)

Abstract

Laser intersatellite link (LISL) offers a large bandwidth, low power loss and high reliability transmission scheme to the satellite communication. With the rise of commercial applications of giant constellations, the LISL technology could be used to build the free-space backbone network to deliver the information all over the world. However, the operational scheme on the new frequency-carrier also brings new issues. The transmission performance is highly dependent on the channel quality, i.e., the laser channel for our case. In this paper, we build up the theoretical model of the transmission channel for the LISL system, considering the sun outage, the doppler frequency shift and the platform vibration as the major noise sources for the free-space laser communication system. The numerical simulation is carried out to quantify the detail impacts from these sources and to define the operational region of the QPSK transmission system. According to our calculations, the large elevation angle, the low frequency shift and the less vibration could improve the transmission performance.

A Local Pre-Rerouting Algorithm to Combat Sun Outage for Inter-Satellite Links in Low Earth Orbit Satellite Networks

“…Due to its high frequency and large bandwidth, the laser inter-satellite link is extremely susceptible to interference from the sun outage phenomenon. When the laser link is collinear with sunlight, the laser link will be interrupted for a period of time [5].…”