Performance estimation of optical leo downlinks

Fuchs, Christian; Perlot, Nicolas; Riedi, Jerome; Perdigues, Josep

Document type :

Article dans une revue scientifique: Article original

DOI :

10.1109/JSAC.2018.2832831

Permalink :

http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12210/105089

Title :

Performance estimation of optical leo downlinks

Author(s) :

Fuchs, Christian [Auteur]
German Aerospace Center [DLR]
Perlot, Nicolas [Auteur]
Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications - Heinrich Hertz Institute [Fraunhofer HHI]
Riedi, Jerome [Auteur]

Laboratoire d'Optique Atmosphérique (LOA) - UMR 8518
Laboratoire d’Optique Atmosphérique - UMR 8518 [LOA]
Perdigues, Josep [Auteur]
European Space Research and Technology Centre [ESTEC]

Journal title :

IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun.

Abbreviated title :

IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun.

Volume number :

Publication date :

2018-05-01

ISSN :

0733-8716

English keyword(s) :

Optical satellite communications
optical satellite downlinks

HAL domain(s) :

Physique [physics]

English abstract : [en]

Optical satellite communications have continually gained attention throughout previous years. Optical downlinks to transmit data from Earth observation satellites to ground may be an attractive solution to overcome the ...
Show more >Optical satellite communications have continually gained attention throughout previous years. Optical downlinks to transmit data from Earth observation satellites to ground may be an attractive solution to overcome the bottleneck caused by the limited spectrum and data rates of radio frequency systems. Due to the significant attenuation introduced by clouds, it is generally considered that optical communication systems cannot penetrate clouds. Therefore, the optimization and design of optical ground station (OGS) networks enabling a high combined availability is crucial for the application of optical downlinks. Within the ONUBLA 1 study funded under the European Space Agency's General Study Programme, a simulation software has been developed. It includes a global cloud database, which was generated from various satellite sources, and a simulation tool, which allows for assessing the system performance of optical satellite links in terms of availability, achievable throughput, latency, and other characteristics. Different system parameters, such as ground station network topologies, sensor- and communication-link-rates, memory sizes, and many more, can be taken into account in the simulation. In this paper, we focused on the assessment of optical low Earth orbit (LEO) downlinks. A large number of system configurations and parameters have been compared and will be presented in this paper. Three OGS network configurations with sites at European, polar, and worldwide locations have been compared. We could confirm that large, worldwide OGS networks perform better and enable the transmission of more data than small, regional networks. We particularly found that the buffer size on board the satellite plays a crucial role for the system design. A further key result is that latency-critical applications require large OGS networks to meet the requirements. Finally, a comparison with potential RF systems shows that optical LEO downlinks can compete with RF solutions and even outperform them if a reasonably sized buffer is available on board the satellite.Show less >

Language :

Anglais

Audience :

Internationale

Popular science :

Non

Administrative institution(s) :

CNRS
Université de Lille

Collections :

Laboratoire d'Optique Atmosphérique (LOA) - UMR 8518

Submission date :

2024-01-30T11:45:50Z
2024-02-26T13:12:52Z

Version	Link	Modification date
2	20.500.12210/105089*	2024-02-26T13:08:05Z
1	20.500.12210/105089.1	2024-01-30T11:45:50Z

Performance estimation of optical leo downlinks

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Performance estimation of optical leo downlinks

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