Survivable Free Space Optical Mesh Network using High-Altitude Platforms

TL;DR

This paper proposes a survivable free space optical mesh network using high-altitude platforms, enhancing communication resilience against clouds with an efficient topology design algorithm.

Contribution

It introduces an end-to-end switching model and a topology design algorithm for survivable HAP-based FSO networks, addressing cloud-induced line-of-sight disruptions.

Findings

Survivable networks use more resources but are not significantly more expensive.

The protection mechanism improves communication survivability.

Resource utilization remains efficient despite added survivability features.

Abstract

Free space optical (FSO) communication refers to the information transmission technology based on the propagation of optical signals in space. FSO communication requires that the transmitter and receiver directly see each other. High-altitude platforms (HAPs) have been proposed for carrying FSO transceivers in the stratosphere. A multihop HAP network with FSO links can relay traffic between ground FSO nodes. In this study, we propose an end-to-end switching model for forwarding traffic between massive pairs of ground FSO nodes over a HAP network. A protection mechanism is employed for improving the communication survivability in the presence of clouds, which may break the line of sight (LoS) between HAPs and ground nodes. We propose an algorithm for designing the topology of the survivable HAP network, given a set of ground FSO nodes. The results demonstrate that, even though networks with survivable capacity use more resources, they are not necessary much more expensive than those without survivability in terms of equipment, i.e., HAPs and FSO devices, and in terms of wavelength resource utilization.