Performance degradation of QAM based inter-satellite optical communication system under gamma irradiation

Main devices in quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) based inter-satellite optical communication system were irradiated to a total dose of 20 krad with the dose rate of 5 rad/s using a Co60 radiation source. Gamma irradiation impacts on devices were analyzed and on the basis, system performance degradation was simulated. Variety of system BER along with onboard working time for different inter-satellite links was presented. In addition, some adaption methods were proposed to reduce gamma irradiation induced degradation.