Seasonal analysis of atmospheric channel model for GEO satellite-to-ground laser links using LUCAS

This paper presents seasonal analysis of atmospheric channel model for GEO satellite-to-ground laser links using LUCAS and NICT Okinawa OGS. Our research work experimentally reveals that received power data measured from three campaigns (during November to December 2021, during September 2022, and during November 2023) show distinct seasonal characteristics and are consistently well-fitted to a combined Lognormal and Beckmann (LNBM) distribution in warm and cool seasons. Coherence times also exhibit seasonal dependence and are generally longer for a large aperture telescope due to aperture averaging. Seasonal characteristics comparison also highlights that the wind speed is strongly associated with the seasonal atmospheric channel models in both seasons. In addition, this paper proposes the predictive workflow for link design of satellite-to-ground laser links.