Performance Evaluation of Low Earth Orbit Communication Satellites

Abstract

Recently, there is a growing trend toward deploying low Earth orbit communication satellites due to lower latency and easier launching compared with geostationary satellites. In this paper, we study the effect of altitude and inclination angle on the coverage probability and data rate of a user located in Tampere. The simulations show that the minimum inclination angle that results in sufficient coverage and data rate decreases as altitude increases. On the other hand, for inclination angles which are larger than the minimum required inclination, the better performance is obtained for lower altitudes. This study provides a guideline for LEO constellation design based on coverage and data rate needs.