My present understanding is that starlink satellites with lasers are not designed to communicate inter-plane. Each launch of starlink satellites is put into exactly the same orbital inclination (53.2 degrees or the more rare near polar orbits now launched from Vandenberg).

In the weeks and months following their launch they spread out into an extended line all following each other in the same plane. Plane change maneuvers are extremely expensive in delta-v for any satellite and are generally avoided unless absolutely necessary. Best conjecture is that starlink satellites' on board propellant for hall effect or ion thrusters (or whatever they're using that has an ISP above 3000) is used almost exclusively for thrusting prograde to maintain altitude.

If you view a launch of 45 or 50 starlink satellites in a live animated satellite tracking application, based on their TLE orbital data, they all follow each other in a line. Satellites in the same line may be using inter-satellite lasers to speak to the unit immediately in front of it, and immediately behind it, forming a conga-line like network of linked satellites until they get to one that is generally above a starlink earth station/terrestrial network facility. At which point the traffic is transferred.

Starlink has recently made service available for purchase in Nunavut and all of the other high-latitude areas of northern Canada, which means that they clearly think they have sufficient (82 degree plus) inclination sets of satellites and inter-satellite links working to provide service in an area that definitely has no terrestrial fiber or starlink earth stations.



On Mon, Jan 23, 2023 at 11:29 AM Thomas Bellman <bellman@nsc.liu.se> wrote:
On 2023-01-23 19:08, I wrote:

> I get that for 1310 nm light, the doppler shift would be just under
> 0.07 nm, or 12.2 GHz:
> [...]
> In the ITU C band, I get the doppler shift to be about 10.5 GHz (at
> channel 72, 197200 GHz or 1520.25 nm).
> [...]
> These shifts are noticably less than typical grid widths used for
> DWDM (±50 GHz for the standard spacing), so it seems unlikely to me
> that the doppler shift would be a problem.

And as I was bicycling home, I of course thought of another aspect
of the doppler shift: the timing between the symbols in the signal,
or in other words the baud rate.  There will be something like a
phase-locked loop (PLL) in the receiver in order to know when one
symbol ends and the next one starts, and that PLL can only deal
with a certain amount of baud rate shift.

But we can use the same formula.  And in general, the doppler shift
for 16 km/s is about 53 parts per million.  So e.g. a 112 Gbaud signal
would be received as 6 Mbaud faster or slower than it was sent at.
And here I have to confess that I don't know how generous typical
receiver PLL:s in network equipment are.


Another potential aspect might be the decoding of phase-shift keying,
i.e. when phase modulation is used for the signal.  My *very*vague*
understanding is that the typical way to decode a phase-modulated
signal, is to mix the incoming signal with a reference carrier wave,
generated locally by the receiver, and the interference between the
two gives you the actual signal.  But to do that, the reference must
have the same frequency as the received wave, and, I guess, must
match very closely.  Can they adapt to an incoming wave that is 53 ppm
offset from what it should be?

Or have I misunderstood this?  Analogue signals is very much *NOT*
my forte...


        /Bellman