English

Optical Wireless Satellite Networks versus Optical Fiber Terrestrial Networks: The Latency Perspective

Signal Processing 2021-06-16 v1

Abstract

Formed by using laser inter-satellite links (LISLs) among satellites in upcoming low Earth orbit and very low Earth orbit satellite constellations, optical wireless satellite networks (OWSNs), also known as free-space optical satellite networks, can provide a better alternative to existing optical fiber terrestrial networks (OFTNs) for long-distance inter-continental data communications. The LISLs operate at the speed of light in vacuum in space, which gives OWSNs a crucial advantage over OFTNs in terms of latency. In this paper, we employ the satellite constellation for Phase I of Starlink and LISLs between satellites to simulate an OWSN. Then, we compare the network latency of this OWSN and the OFTN under three different scenarios for long-distance inter-continental data communications. The results show that the OWSN performs better than the OFTN in all scenarios. It is observed that the longer the length of the inter-continental connection between the source and the destination, the better the latency improvement offered by the OWSN compared to OFTN.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2106.07737,
  title  = {Optical Wireless Satellite Networks versus Optical Fiber Terrestrial Networks: The Latency Perspective},
  author = {Aizaz U. Chaudhry and Halim Yanikomeroglu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2106.07737},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

Accepted for publication in proceedings of 2021 30th Biennial Symposium on Communications (BSC 2021)