Cooperation in Space: HAPS-Aided Optical Inter-Satellite Connectivity With Opportunistic Scheduling

Issues with tracking, precision pointing, and Doppler shift are the major sources of performance loss in laser inter-satellite communication that can severely decrease coverage overall satellite constellations. As a solution to these problems, we propose cooperation strategy which high altitude platform station (HAPS) staying at quasi-stationary position contributes connectivity. In this setup, HAPS node uses two different scheduling approaches: one relies on zenith angle; other instantaneous signal-to-noise ratio. To quantify proposed scheme, outage probabilities for methods obtained. addition, guidelines design practical networks provided.