ENHANCED DUAL-LAYER MULTIPLEXING FOR HIGH-CAPACITY INTER-SATELLITE OPTICAL WIRELESS COMMUNICATION

Abstract

This study presents a novel high-capacity inter-satellite optical wireless communication (OWC) system employing hybrid Mode Division Multiplexing (MDM) and Orbital Angular Momentum (OAM) multiplexing. The system's performance is analyzed under varying atmospheric conditions to assess signal degradation and transmission efficiency. A laboratory testbed was developed to evaluate the system in the third-atmosphere propagation window (8–12 μm). The experimental validation was conducted in controlled environments and real-world settings using optical links of 1.5 m and 10 m. The results demonstrate that OAM beams exhibit superior resilience to turbulence-induced phase distortions compared to conventional near-infrared (NIR) wavelengths, particularly under reduced visibility conditions such as fog and light rain. Analytical simulations further confirm the advantage of OAM multiplexing combined with MDM in mitigating signal attenuation. The system incorporates Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers (VCSELs) as the optical source and Ge-on-Si photodetectors for efficient signal reception. The findings indicate a significant improvement in transmission capacity, reliability, and spectral efficiency, making the proposed approach a promising candidate for future high-data-rate inter-satellite communications.