Sylvain Poulenard sylvain.poulenard@airbus.com Airbus DS Toulouse

Protection schemes for optical communication between optical ground station and satellite

Airbus Defence and Space Confidential

Missions

5 December, 2019 COAT 2019 2

Optical links through the atmosphere are of interest

Earth Observation LEO Mega constellation The Space Data Highway Broadband satellite

Airbus Defence and Space Confidential

Missions – typical metrics

5 December, 2019 COAT 2019 3

Earth Observation LEO Mega constellation The Space Data Highway Broadband satellite

Volume of images succesfully downloaded [Tbit/day] Latency [min - hours]

Satellite capacity [Gbps – Tbps] Services availability [99.9%] Latency [ms – s]

Satellite capacity [Gbps – Tbps] Services availability [99.9%] Latency [ms – s]

Atmosphere turbulence strenght is a concern

Airbus Defence and Space Confidential

AIRBUS - feeder links

5 December, 2019 Presentation title runs here (go to Header and Footer to edit this text) 4

Internet

GEO satellite

Feeder link

User links

MODEM

Gateway End-user

Airbus Defence and Space Confidential

Optical feeder links

5 December, 2019 Presentation title runs here (go to Header and Footer to edit this text) 5

Internet

GEO satellite

Feeder link

User links

MODEM

Gateway End-user

Airbus Defence and Space Confidential

Difference between uplink and downlink

5 December, 2019 COAT 2019 6

Uplink is the most demanding link

Airbus Defence and Space Confidential

How to guaranty « availability » of a service ensured by optical links through turbulence?

5 December, 2019 COAT 2019 7

Availability Nominal « worst case »

12cm 4cm

𝒓𝒓𝟎𝟎@𝟏𝟏,𝟓𝟓𝟓𝟓𝟓𝟓𝟓@𝐳𝐳𝐳𝐳𝐳𝐳𝐳𝐳𝐳𝐳𝐳𝐳 𝐚𝐚𝐳𝐳𝐚𝐚𝐚𝐚𝐳𝐳

Availability Nominal « worst case »

26µrad 11µrad

𝜽𝜽𝟎𝟎@𝟏𝟏,𝟓𝟓𝟓𝟓𝟓𝟓𝟓@𝐳𝐳𝐳𝐳𝐳𝐳𝐳𝐳𝐳𝐳𝐳𝐳 𝐚𝐚𝐳𝐳𝐚𝐚𝐚𝐚𝐳𝐳

Osborn, J., Wilson, et al. Optical turbulence profiling with Stereo-SCIDAR for VLT and ELT. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 478(1), 825-834 (2018).

Lack of Cn² profile retrieval for long period Definition of a « representative worst case » at Tenerife for in-orbit demonstration of optical feeder link

Airbus Defence and Space Confidential

How to guaranty « availability » of a service ensured by optical uplink?

5 December, 2019 COAT 2019 8

In any case, it is a slow fading channel

70% of the time it should be like this or better… Some time it could be like this or worst…

* Simulations performed by ONERA-DOTA

Protection schemes

Airbus Defence and Space Confidential

FEC to correct errors / UL-FEC to correct burst of errors

08/03/2018 COAT 2019 10

…

(n-k)

…

… …

Parity 1

…

…

Parity N-K

Forward Error correcting Code

FEC(n,k)

Upper Layer - Forward Error correcting Code

UL-FEC(N,K)

Bit level

Packet level Both

parity bits

Data 1(k bits)

Data 2(k bits)

Data K(k bits)

…

n : FEC frame length in bits k : number of data bits in FEC frame N: UL-FEC frame length in packets K: number of data packets in UL-FEC

(n-k): parity to retrieve informations

Airbus Defence and Space Confidential

Interleaver and/or UL-FEC to get back channel diversity

08/03/2018 COAT 2019 11

Data 1(k bits)

Data 2(k bits)

Data K(k bits)

… Data 1

Parity 1 …

…

Parity N-K

Upper Layer - Forward Error correcting Code (UL-FEC)

Bit level

Packet level

Interleaver RC 1

Dat

a 1

Dat

a 2

Dat

a K

…

1 1

Data 1 Parity N-K

Serializer

. 1 . 1 L

Dat

a K

+1

Dat

a L …

W = L x k

W = N x k

W lasts longer than channel coherence time

2 2

…

…

L: Number of data packets in interleaver windows N: Number of data packets in UL-FEC

W: time duration windows to get back channel diversity

Airbus Defence and Space Confidential

What does a good protection scheme mean for us?

Good performances and scalable Low latency Great power saving on the link budget while maintining a high information rate Able to adapt to atmospheric turbulence strenght variation

Low on board resources consumption Limited number of decoding iterations and simple decoding algorithms Easy encoding algorithms High level of parallelism

5 December, 2019 COAT 2019 12

For low latency and high code rate {FEC + physical layer bit interleaver} is the selected option

Part 1 – 10Gbit/s downlink

Airbus Defence and Space Confidential

Low on board resources consumption In-house design LDPC assuming soft inputs (Analog to digital converters)

5 December, 2019 COAT 2019) 14

0 1 2 3 4 5 610 -9

10 -8

10 -7

10 -6

10 -5

10 -4

10 -3

10 -2

10 -1

10 0

0 1 2 3 4 5 610 -12

10 -10

10 -8

10 -6

10 -4

10 -2

10 0

Standard codes for RF feeder links

Codes proposed for optical feeder downlinks

With such codes a 10Gbits encoded DPSK downlink at 30° elevation should be error free under « strong » turbulence with a 4/5 FEC rate an interleaver and a < 5W optical amplifier

Airbus Defence and Space Confidential

Good performances and scalable In-house design LDPC assuming soft inputs (Analog to digital converters)

5 December, 2019 COAT 2019 15

10 Gbit/s FEC

• Less than 20% of future space qualified F¨PGA (LUTs - few BRAMs), assuming strong derating (50%) on fMAX (200 MHz)

• These results can be optimized to increase the throughput/area of LDPC serial-parallel encoders.

• About 560k LUTs and 833 BRAMs assuming strong derating (50%) on fMAX (250 MHz)

• Can be easily achieved on several high-end FPGA technologies (Xilinx, Intel)

Generic IP core available

encoding

decoding

Part 2 – 10Gbit/s uplink

Airbus Defence and Space Confidential

Low on board resources consumption In-house design LDPC assuming hard inputs (No ADC on board the satellite)

• Regular LDPC

• Optimization of hard input decoder to save power consumption on board

5 December, 2019 COAT 2019 17

R OOK 10 Gbit/s 1/2 1,32 4/5 0,82

Power gap wrt to capacity [dB]

Good performances and low on-board consumption is reached nevertheless…

Flip-Flop LUT6 Bloc RAM

LDPC (20480, 16384) R =4/5 < 20%

LDPC (32768, 16384) R= 1/2

Occupancy percentage of space qualified FPGA

Airbus Defence and Space Confidential

Optical uplink to GEO satellite

5 December, 2019 COAT 2019 18

70% of the time it should be liked this or better… Some time it could be liked this or worst…

Error free uplink is power consuming

93 83

78

49 44 42 39

020406080

100

20 50 100 200

HPO

A (W

)

Interleaver duration (ms)

DTx=20cm to GEO satellite

R=4/5 R=1/2

88 83 74

020406080

100

20 50 100 200

HPO

A (W

)

Interleaver duration (ms)

DTx=20cm to GEO satellite

R=4/5 R=1/2

Airbus Defence and Space Confidential

Conclusion

The lack of extensive characterization of Cn² profile for sites « relevant » for broadband satellite system shall be solved. All affordable « CAPEX but also OPEX » techniques to make uplink easier is nice to have. We perform simulations to estimate the interest of technologies on the end-to-end system.

5 December, 2019 COAT 2019 19

Optical Ground Station

Optical fibers

6-OGSs network > 99,5% + 10-OGSs network > 99,9%

Thank you