FSO ground network optimization and analysis considering the influence of clouds

This document presents a two step analysis aiming at determining an optimised network of ground stations suitable for FSO satellite downlink communications. The optimisation is performed with respect to cloudiness for which experimental datasets are available. Daily visibility times or equivalently link capacities enabled by FSO are compared with X-band ones considering realistic GMES orbits. Both single site and site diversity configurations are addressed in the meteorological and the performance analyses.