Climatic-dependent energy efficient design of satellite links operating above 10GHz: An optimal stopping approach

The increasing demand for higher communication data rates leads the operation of satellite systems to frequency bands above 10GHz. Moreover, it is very important for satellite systems to reduce the energy consumption of the communication part in order to maintain high energy efficiency, especially for remote satellite terminals that do not have a continuous power supply. This paper focuses on the energy efficient design of a satellite link that operates at the frequency range above 10GHz, where rain attenuation is the dominant fading mechanism. Specifically, we design an opportunistic transmission scheduler with a view to minimizing the energy consumption of a broadband satellite terminal or a gateway by exploiting the stochastic characteristics of the propagation conditions and more specifically the rain fading channel. The proposed scheduling policy, which is derived by employing the optimal stopping theory, postpones the communication up to an acceptable deadline until the best channel conditions are found. The energy efficiency gain that the proposed scheduler achieves and the effects of various satellite link parameters are examined. Significant conclusions for the optimization of satellite communication links in terms of energy efficiency are drawn.