Pulse-coded multiple access in space optical communications

There is interest in space-based wireless optical networks with nonsynchronous multiple access capability. Since space links are usually power-limited, pulsing is necessary to accomplish the multiple accessing and data transmission. In this paper, a nonsynchronous pulsed multiple-access optical-space system using code sequences for identifying stations is considered. Both OOK and PPM data encoding is considered and the link data rates and bit error probabilities (PE) are examined. It is shown that the achievable data rates are limited by the multiple access coding and the link SNR, while the PE can be either crosstalk or power-limited. It appears that moderate data rates (tens of Mb/s) are feasible with networks of about 5-20 stations even with low-link SNR