Performance Analysis of Large-Scale NGSO Satellite-Based Radio Astronomy Systems

Large-scale non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) satellite communication systems (SCSs) are emerging to play an important role for future global wireless communication. However, downlink transmissions from these mega-constellation SCSs can cause disruptive radio frequency interference (RFI) to the radio astronomy systems (RASs) on the ground or in space. Therefore, the satellite-based RASs including low earth orbit (LEO)-based or medium earth orbit (MEO)-based RASs are further considered to lower the impact from SCSs on the higher orbit onto the ground RASs and the lower orbit RASs. In this paper, we first analyze and compare the impact of RFI on LEO satellite-based RAS and MEO satellite-based RAS. The RFI results show that for both systems, RFI from higher orbit SCSs can totally undermine the RAS continuum observation adjacent to the SCS downlink bands when using the emission mask defined by National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). To solve the observation issues for both systems, we find out the required SCS emission mask for each RAS so that both systems can avoid RFI. Secondly, this paper also investigates three typical radio astronomy metrics such as maximum baseline distance (MBD), the number of simultaneously observing telescopes, and the signal to interference plus noise power ratio (SINR) performance. Our evaluation results show that the satellite-based RASs have greater MBD, thus, better spatial resolution, than the ground-based RAS. Due to the greater antenna gain of the ground telescopes, the SINR performance of satellite-based RASs may have limitations comparatively. However, because of more RFI sources at ground RASs in reality, satellite-based RASs have better chances to avoid RFI impact and potential SINR advantages. Additionally, we also explore the advantages of NGSO satellite-based RAS from a communication side. Our analysis shows that the large-scale NGSO satellite-based RAS can offer more spectrum access to both SCS and RAS.