An Intelligent Ground Station Selection Algorithm in Satellite Optical Communications via Deep Learning

Among the most common issues to be faced in optical satellite communications, weather conditions play a fundamental role for a correct transmission of the information. In the case of heavy rain, hailstorm snow, or even dense clouds, a communication channel between the satellite and a optical ground station (OGS) may suffer significant interference, causing errors in delivering information. Since satellite transmissions cover in general very widespread areas, it usually happens that different zones are characterized by different weather conditions. This property is exploited by the site diversity technique, that tries to limit bad weather effects on the overall availability of the communication channel. When implementing such a site diversity technique, the satellite should be able to switch between the OGSs, by evaluating the rain events probability either through direct measurement campaigns or exploiting statistical models. The setup studied in this work involves a geostationary satellite equipped with two laser communication terminals (LCTs). In order to dynamically decide the OGSs to be pointed by those LCTs, a Deep-Learning based proactive control algorithm for site diversity, performing weather forecasting and consequent preventive LCT switching on the basis of current and past weather conditions has been developed. Simulative results show the ability of our proposed algorithm in achieving the maximum possible link availability, which is bounded by the weather conditions of all the OGSs.