CubeSat swarm in low earth orbit is an attractive alternative to present-day expensive and bulky satellite-based remote sensing systems. This article presents the design and optimization rules to achieve omnidirectional, high speed, long-range (more than 100 km) data communication among CubeSats. The unprecedented size, weight, power, and cost constraints imposed by the CubeSat platform and the availability of the commercial-off-the-shelf components are considered in the analyses. Analytical studies related to the scanning mirror based beam steering system as well as scanning mirror's smallest step angle requirement are presented. In addition, we demonstrate the relations and dependencies among scanning mirror's smallest step angle, laser beam divergence, optics dimensions, communication distance, and scanning area filling efficiency, etc. Furthermore, the optimization challenges of the transmit laser beam size considering the interplay among beam divergence, beam clipping, and scattering are studied in detail. This article also presents the effect of laser peak power, initial beam size, and communication distance on effective communication beamwidth to maintain a long-distance (more than 100 km) communication with SNR ≥ 10 dB at a data rate greater than 500 Mb/s.

中文翻译：

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CubeSats 的全向光交联：发射器优化

低地球轨道中的立方体卫星群是当今昂贵且庞大的基于卫星的遥感系统的一种有吸引力的替代方案。本文介绍了实现立方体卫星之间全向、高速、远距离（100 公里以上）数据通信的设计和优化规则。分析中考虑了 CubeSat 平台所施加的前所未有的尺寸、重量、功率和成本限制以及商用现成组件的可用性。介绍了与基于扫描镜的光束转向系统以及扫描镜的最小步距角要求相关的分析研究。此外，我们还论证了扫描镜最小步距角、激光束发散度、光学尺寸、通信距离和扫描区域填充效率等之间的关系和依赖性。此外，详细研究了考虑光束发散、光束剪裁和散射之间相互作用的发射激光光束尺寸的优化挑战。本文还介绍了激光峰值功率、初始光束大小和通信距离对有效通信光束宽度的影响，以在大于 500 Mb/s 的数据速率下保持 SNR ≥ 10 dB 的长距离（超过 100 公里）通信.