Comprehensive Optical Inter-Satellite Communication Model for Low Earth Orbit Constellations: Analyzing Transmission Power Requirements

Free-space optical communications have emerged as a powerful solution for inter-satellite links, playing a crucial role in next-generation satellite networks. This paper introduces a comprehensive model that enables the dynamic evaluation of optical power requirements for realistic low Earth orbit satellite constellations, throughout the orbital period. Our approach incorporates the constellation architecture, link budget analysis and optical transceiver design, to accurately estimate the power required for sustaining connectivity for both intra- and inter-orbit links. We apply the model considering Walker delta-type constellations of varying densities. We show that in dense constellations, even at high data rates, the required transmission power can be low enough to mitigate the need of optical amplification. Dynamically estimating the power requirements is vital when evaluating energy savings in adaptive scenarios where terminals adaptively change the emitted power depending on link status. Our model is implemented in Python and is openly available under an open-source license. It can be easily adapted to various alternative constellation configurations.