Analysis of THz Earth-Satellite Link Capacity in the Mid-Latitude Regions

Abstract

Terahertz (THz) communication is considered a favorable technology for future non-terrestrial high data-rate applications due to huge bandwidth available. However, THz signals suffer from scattering loss due to clouds, rain, and snow, along with water vapor attenuation in the path, particularly when establishing a geostationary-satellite-to-earth-station (GEO-ES) THz link. In this work, we theoretically analyze the effect of snow and rain particle scattering on the communication capacity of GEO-ES links in the selective THz bands (140GHz, 220GHz, and 345 GHz), and evaluate the data capacity of a GEO-ES opto-electronic link in the mid-latitude regions. The analysis results show that under the cloud and dry snow scenarios, the capacity has some potential to support reasonable data rates in the 140 and 220 GHz bands for a GEO-ES link.