Advanced Photonics Nexus, Volume. , Issue , ()

Homodyne coherent inter-satellite communications with IMDD comparable DSP [Early Posting]

Chen Junda, Li Kun, Mei Tianjin, Zhang Mingming, Hu Zihe, Zhou Jiajun, Liu Chen, Tang Ming, Andrekson Peter
Author Affiliations
  • Chalmers University of Technology
  • Huazhong University of Science and Technology
  • Hubei Jiufengshan Laboratory
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    Abstract. The rapid development of low earth orbit (LEO) satellite communication networks imposes stringent bandwidth, cost and power consumption requirements. Conventional intradyne detection (ID) architectures struggle with high Doppler frequency shifts (DFS), necessitating excessive sampling rate and complex digital signal processing (DSP), resulting in elevated power consumption. This paper proposes a novel inter-satellite polarization division multiplexing self-homodyne detection (PDM-SHD) architecture that compensates for DFS in optical domain by co-transmitting a polarization-orthogonal carrier light. The proposed architecture could achieve Nyquist sampling and half quantization noise, leading to 53.9% reduction in analog-to-digital converter power consumption under 40 Gbps 16-QAM transmission with 16 dB SNR. By demodulating I/Q axis signals independently with real-valued single-input single-output (SISO) processing, it requires only about 15% DSP complexity and achieved intensity-modulation and direct-detection comparable. SISO processing also has the potential to transmit I and Q components from separate devices or satellites, enabling flexible satellite communication network. The results demonstrate that the proposed architecture achieves detection sensitivities of -40.8 dBm for 80 Gbps QPSK transmission and -33.0 dBm for 160 Gbps 16-QAM transmission with Nyquist sampling, while ID architecture can hardly work. The proposed architecture effectively balances satellite power constraints with DSP computational demands for high-speed mega-constellation communications.

    Paper Information

    Manuscript Accepted: Sep. 9, 2025

    Posted: Sep. 9, 2025

    DOI: APN