Reliable Satellite Optical Backhaul Feeder Links for Remote Areas via Fiber Tethered Aerostats

Enabling high-speed internet access in rural areas is vital for advancing education, healthcare, environmental protection, and economic growth. However, the cost of backhaul poses a significant barrier to achieving broadband connectivity in these regions. Optical satellite-ground feeder links offer an affordable solution for rural backhauling, delivering high-speed capabilities. Nevertheless, cloud-induced attenuation poses a major challenge, often leading to substantial degradation or complete disruption of such optical satellite feeder links. To address this issue, we propose an optical feeder link utilizing fiber tethered aerostats. Our study focuses on evaluating the performance of this proposed approach in Canada's expansive northern geography, where we analyze the statistical distributions of cloud-induced attenuation using ERA5 data. We compare the availability of the proposed approach with traditional ground diversity approaches. The numerical results demonstrate that even during the warm months when liquid clouds cause significant attenuation, the proposed approach achieves a link availability of over 95%.