Inter-satellite optical wireless communication system design and simulation

Abstract

An ultra-high bit-rate inter-satellite optical wireless communication (IsOWC) system is proposed in thisstudy. The system is designed and simulated up to the bit-rate of 400 Gbps. The proposed system is a non-diffused link or line-of-sight setup, which uses coherent optical quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK) modulation technique. The performance of the system is analysed in terms of Q-factor, bit-error rate, eye opening and so on. The coverage distance observed with an input power level of 30 dBm for a bit-rate of 400, 160 and 100 Gbps are 4767, 7542 and 9532 km, respectively. Finally, the maximum bit-rate that can be communicated, for inter-satellite link at different orbits such as low-Earth orbit, medium-Earth orbit and geostationary Earth orbit are presented. To the best of the authors knowledge for the first time they have proposed a novel QPSK modulation technique for the design of IsOWC system for achieving higher coverage distance and data rate, which was not been addressed in any current or earlier publications. � The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2012.