Green Satellite Communication Link Design, Optimization, and Performance Analysis

Abstract

The explosive growth in high data rate applications has led to increased satellite communication systems and network energy requirements. Therefore, it is essential to design green or energy-efficient satellite communication links to utilize limited energy sources. In this paper, we consider the low earth orbit (LEO) satellite links and investigate energy efficiency optimization and energy efficiency-outage probability. Specifically, we obtain insightful inequalities for the end-to-end energy efficiency of satellite links. We then investigate the energy efficiency (EE) and outage probability based on EE. Considering typical LEO satellite link parameters, we numerically investigate its performance and determine optimal transmit power to achieve maximum energy efficiency. We believe that this study is useful for designing optimal green satellite communication links in low earth orbits.