Abstract

As the cost of launching low Earth orbit satellites continuously decreases, satellite-based communications networks are emerging as a new area for both academia and industry. Lasers are already employed for building inter-satellite links, forming optical satellite networks. The orbiting nature of satellites determines that the optical satellite networks are usually uniformly distributed around the Earth, to provide seamless coverage to any place at all times. However, the end users on the Earth are non-uniformly distributed. As a result, many satellites with laser links might not be utilized efficiently. From the energy perspective, this work studies the energy-efficiency issues of the inter-satellite laser links. We first model the optical satellite networks by presenting the satellite constellation with inter-satellite laser design principles and introduce the laser ON/OFF control problem accordingly. To explore the possibility of saving energy in the massive satellite deployment, we further introduce the gravity-based network traffic model and propose a gravity-based network traffic abstraction (GNTA) model to evaluate the importance of each laser link. Accordingly, we further propose a GNTA-based ON/OFF control (GOOC) algorithm to improve the energy efficiency of inter-satellite laser links by switching OFF parts of the laser links that are less utilized. We evaluate the GOOC’s performance using simulation, and results show that switching OFF 20% of the laser terminals in the full-gridmesh topology can improve the energy efficiency by about 10%, with an acceptable cost of network performance degradation.

© 2023 Optica Publishing Group

Deep-learning-based path computation without routing convergence in optical satellite networks

Yinji Jing, Longteng Yi, Yongli Zhao, Hua Wang, Wei Wang, and Jie Zhang
J. Opt. Commun. Netw. 15(5) 294-303 (2023)

Load-balancing routing algorithms for service congestion avoidance in LEO optical satellite networks

Yunxiao Ning, Longteng Yi, Yongli Zhao, Kaiqiang Qi, Hua Wang, Sabidur Rahman, and Jie Zhang
J. Opt. Commun. Netw. 15(12) 1038-1049 (2023)

Energy-efficient routing based on a genetic algorithm for satellite laser communication

Yinji Jing, Zhenghao Yang, Yongli Zhao, Hua Wang, Wei Wang, Sabidur Rahman, and Jie Zhang
Opt. Express 31(5) 8682-8695 (2023)

Wavelength Dimensioning of Optical Transport Networks Over Nongeosychronous Satellite Constellations

Liying Tan, Qinglong Yang, Jing Ma, and Shiqi Jiang
J. Opt. Commun. Netw. 2(4) 166-174 (2010)

Scalable and low server-to-server latency data center network architecture based on optical packet inter-rack and intra-rack switching

Georgios Drainakis, Peristera Baziana, and Adonis Bogris
J. Opt. Commun. Netw. 15(11) 804-819 (2023)