Channel-adaptive relay scheme with dynamical mode switching for a power-efficient dual-hop inter-satellite optical wireless communication system

To mitigate the power consumption of optical relays in inter-satellite networks, we propose a dynamically reconfigurable relay architecture integrating optical-amplify-and-forward (OAF), optical-regenerate-and-forward (ORF), and decode-and-forward (DF) modes. This architecture minimizes power by defaulting to the low-power OAF mode and adaptively switching to more robust, power-intensive modes only as dictated by the link budget. The scheme is validated using a dual-hop real-time optical transmission system to emulate a three-satellite dynamic scenario. Our architecture achieves a power-saving duty cycle of 45.7% and a peak power reduction of 9.08 W compared to a static DF-only mode. When enhanced with dynamic booster power control, the architecture reduces average power consumption by 9.02%, compared to power-aware DF baselines. This work presents a promising power-efficient solution for future satellite network construction.