MEO optical intersatellite network: Performance evaluation

Optical technology allows to design an inter-satellite network able to guarantee the data transfer between different places on Earth, at high data rate. Proposed optical network is composed by 27 Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) satellites as network nodes, distributed over three different orbits; communication is established at an access node and reaches the destination node through a number of hops on intra-orbit or inter-orbit links. We focus on the performance analysis of all possible communication links, since each satellite is always in visibility with several nodes and Line Of Sight (LOS) is guaranteed with at least adjacent satellites. Optical links are based on Differential Phase Shift Keying (DPSK) modulation and Direct Detection (DD) receiver scheme; the use of an Erbium Doped Fibre Amplifier (EDFA) has been analyzed, both on transmitter side and receiver front-end. Performance evaluation has been calculated in terms of BER, as function of distances between satellites; it is possible to define a maximum achievable distance for a single hop communication, corresponding to the maximum optical transmitted power that guarantees BER=10^-9. This leads to define a cluster of satellites among which each terminal can choose its counterpart in order to establish the communication.