IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society (Jan 2024)
On the Role of Reflectarrays for Interplanetary Links
Abstract
Interplanetary links (IPL) serve as crucial enablers for space exploration, facilitating secure and adaptable space missions. An integrated IPL with inter-satellite communication (IP-ISL) establishes a unified deep space network, expanding coverage and reducing atmospheric losses. In order to evaluate the performance of both realistic and cost efficient IP-ISL scenario, the challenges, including irregularities in charged density, hardware impairments, and hidden celestial body brightness are analyzed with a reflectarray-based IP-ISL between Earth and Moon orbiters. In this regard, free-space channel is modeled with the charge density irregularities that disturb the angle of arrival. A discretize solution for noise temperature analyze in celestial body brightness is given with average beam occupancy. Lastly, the impact of aggregated phase noise, in-phase and quadrature imbalance and non-linear amplifier are modeled with generalized stochastic hardware impairments. As a solution, the ideal and non-ideal compensation of angle of arrival with the perfect knowledge of it is analyzed. It is observed that $10^{-8}$ order severe hardware impairments with intense solar plasma density drops an ideal system’s spectral efficiency (SE) from $\sim 38~\textrm {(bit/s)/Hz}$ down to $0~\textrm {(bit/s)/Hz}$ . An ideal full angle of arrival fluctuation recovery with full steering range achieves $\sim 20~\textrm {(bit/s)/Hz}$ gain and a limited beamsteering with a numerical reflectarray design achieves at least $\sim 1~\textrm {(bit/s)/Hz}$ gain in severe hardware impairment cases. As a result, we assess the feasibility of an integrated IP-ISL system design to establish a unified deep space network, expanding coverage and reducing atmospheric losses between the Moon and Earth in terms of spectral efficiency, addressing real-life deep space communication challenges.
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