Cooperation in Space: HAPS-Aided Optical Inter-Satellite Connectivity With Opportunistic Scheduling

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ERDOĞAN E., Altunbaş İ., Kurt G. K. , Yanikomeroglu H.

IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS, vol.26, no.4, pp.882-886, 2022 (Peer-Reviewed Journal) identifier identifier

  • Publication Type: Article / Article
  • Volume: 26 Issue: 4
  • Publication Date: 2022
  • Doi Number: 10.1109/lcomm.2022.3140247
  • Journal Name: IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS
  • Journal Indexes: Science Citation Index Expanded, Scopus, PASCAL, Aerospace Database, Communication Abstracts, Compendex, INSPEC, Metadex, Civil Engineering Abstracts
  • Page Numbers: pp.882-886
  • Keywords: Satellites, Attenuation, Low earth orbit satellites, Laser modes, Lasers, Signal to noise ratio, Indexes, Inter-satellite communications, HAPS-aided transmission, laser satellite communication, PERFORMANCE, SYSTEMS

Abstract

Issues with tracking, precision pointing, and Doppler shift are the major sources of performance loss in laser inter-satellite communication that can severely decrease the coverage and overall performance of satellite constellations. As a solution to these problems, we propose a cooperation strategy in which a high altitude platform station (HAPS) staying at a quasi-stationary position contributes to the inter-satellite connectivity. In this setup, the HAPS node uses two different scheduling approaches: one that relies on the zenith angle; the other on instantaneous signal-to-noise ratio. To quantify the performance of the proposed scheme, overall outage probabilities for the two scheduling methods are obtained. In addition, guidelines for the design of practical inter-satellite networks are provided.