Free-Space Optical (FSO) Communications is a technology that transmits data using modulated optical beams through the atmosphere or space rather than through fiber-optic cables. FSO systems offer high bandwidth and license-free spectrum, making them suitable for last-mile connectivity, inter-building links, satellite-to-ground links, and inter-satellite optical links in LEO constellations. Research challenges include atmospheric turbulence mitigation, beam pointing and tracking, fog and weather-induced attenuation, and integration with coherent optical networking standards.
We propose to jointly optimize path and gateway selection to achieve load balancing for mobile orbital domain-based hierarchical routing in satellite networks. The load at bottleneck gateway satellites can be reduced by 22% on average.