Coherent Capacity of Satellite Mega-Constellations with Persistence

This paper studies the coherent capacity of noiselimited satellite communications between a serving satellite from a mega-constellation and a ground user. The satellite megaconstellation is stochastically modelled as a non-homogeneous binomial point process at the time instance when inter-satellite handover occurs, and thereafter the chosen satellite is on a deterministic orbit that persistently serves the ground user until it is no longer visible. The persistent satellite capacity is derived as an integral closed-form for a handover strategy that randomly chooses a visible satellite. Additional handover strategies are studied by estimating their persistent capacities using Monte Carlo simulations. The nearest-satellite handover strategy outperforms the random handover strategy but is improved upon with a handover strategy that chooses the satellite with the maximum capacity over its projected orbit. The gap between the persistent capacity and the non-persistent capacity from the literature is significant, motivating the use of persistent capacity for accurate analysis of satellite mega-constellations.