Deep space optical link ARQ performance analysis

Substantial advancements have been made toward the use of optical communications for deep space exploration missions, promising a much higher volume of data to be communicated in comparison with present-day Radio Frequency (RF) based systems. One or more ground-based optical terminals are assumed to communicate with the spacecraft. Both short-term and long-term link outages will arise due to weather at the ground station(s), space platform pointing stability, and other effects. To mitigate these outages, an Automatic Repeat Query (ARQ) retransmission method is assumed, together with a reliable back channel for acknowledgement traffic. Specifically, the Licklider Transmission Protocol (LTP) is used, which is a component of the Disruption-Tolerant Networking (DTN) protocol suite that is well suited for high bandwidth-delay product links subject to disruptions. We provide an analysis of envisioned deep space mission scenarios and quantify buffering, latency and throughput performance, using a simulation in which long-term weather effects are modeled with a Gilbert-Elliot Markov chain, short-term outages occur as a Bernoulli process, and scheduled outages arising from geometric visibility or operational constraints are represented. We find that both short- and long-term effects impact throughput, but long-term weather effects dominate buffer sizing and overflow losses as well as latency performance.