Performance analysis of 160 Gbit/s single-channel PDM-QPSK based inter-satellite optical wireless communication (IsOWC) system

Abstract

Inter-satellite optical wireless communication (IsOWC) links have been exploited by many researchers as a viable technology to transmit information amongst two or more satellites using optical carrier signals and outer space as the medium of propagation medium. IsOWC links can securely transmit information all over the globe. The present study discusses a spectral-efficient large-speed single-channel IsOWC system using polarization division multiplexed-quadrature phase shift keying (PDM-QPSK) scheme. Coherent detection has been used at the receiver terminal for receiver sensitivity improvement. A digital signal processing (DSP) module to mitigate losses due to nonlinearity effects and for estimating carrier phase has been used at the receiver. We have analyzed the proposed link performance by investigating the required optical signal to noise ratio (OSNR) to achieve a target bit error rate (BER). The reported results show a faithful 160 Gbit/s transmission at 40,000 km with good BER. Also, we numerically investigate the OSNR performance of link for increasing pointing errors. Further, a comparative analysis of the proposed link with previous literature illustrates a better performance in terms of spectral efficiency and figure of merit (maximum transmission range $${\times} $$ information transmission rate). The integration of PDM-QPSK with coherent detection and DSP provides a viable platform to develop spectral-efficient IsOWC links.