English

Fundamental Limits of Cooperative Integrated Sensing and Communications over Low-Earth Orbit THz Satellite Channels

Signal Processing 2025-10-23 v1

Abstract

Terahertz inter-satellite links enable unprecedented sensing precision for Low Earth Orbit (LEO) constellations, yet face fundamental bounds from hardware impairments, pointing errors, and network interference. We develop a Network Cram\'er-Rao Lower Bound (N-CRLB) framework incorporating dynamic topology, hardware quality factor Γeff\Gamma_{\text{eff}}, phase noise σϕ2\sigma^2_\phi, and cooperative effects through recursive Fisher Information analysis. Our analysis reveals three key insights: (i) hardware and phase noise create power-independent performance ceilings (σceilingΓeff\sigma_{\text{ceiling}} \propto \sqrt{\Gamma_{\text{eff}}}) and floors (σfloorσϕ2/fc\sigma_{\text{floor}} \propto \sqrt{\sigma^2_\phi}/f_c), with power-only scaling saturating above SNRcrit=1/Γeff\text{SNR}_{\text{crit}}=1/\Gamma_{\text{eff}}; (ii) interference coefficients αm\alpha_{\ell m} enable opportunistic sensing with demonstrated gains of 5.5~dB under specific conditions (65~dB processing gain, 50~dBi antennas); (iii) measurement correlations from shared timing references, when properly modeled, do not degrade performance and can provide common-mode rejection benefits compared to mismodeled independent-noise baselines. Sub-millimeter ranging requires co-optimized hardware (Γeff<0.01\Gamma_{\text{eff}}<0.01), oscillators (σϕ2<102\sigma^2_\phi<10^{-2}), and appropriate 3D geometry configurations.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2510.19007,
  title  = {Fundamental Limits of Cooperative Integrated Sensing and Communications over Low-Earth Orbit THz Satellite Channels},
  author = {Haofan Dong and Houtianfu Wang and Hanlin Cai and Ozgur B. Akan},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.19007},
  year   = {2025}
}