Protocol-aware approach for mitigating radiation-induced errors in free-space optical downlinks

Multigigabit per second satellite-to-ground communications are evolving owing to free-space optical (FSO) communications. They benefit greatly from the use of commercial off-the-shelf field-programmable gate arrays, which offer higher performance than their space-grade counterparts. However, these capabilities are severely diminished in the case of improper implementation of radiation mitigation schemes not being properly assessed. Although these schemes have been improved over the years, they can be further optimized. Therefore, this study proposes, to our knowledge, a new protocol-aware approach, tailored for FSO satellite downlinks, to classify the criticality of radiation-induced errors. This approach can achieve a reduction in overhead by nearly an order of magnitude compared to current protection schemes.