Evaluation of Communication System Employing Space Elevator Base-Station

The use of space elevators is being considered as a new possibility for satellite communications. However, there has been no research on communication using space elevators. In this study, we evaluated the communication performance using space elevators. In particular, we studied the installation altitude of the space elevator at low-altitude stations. As a use case of communication, wireless communication was assumed to be used in the downlink of communication from the space elevator to the ground. The communication performance in wireless communication is mainly determined by the received power. The received power is mainly affected by transmit power, distance attenuation, shadowing, and fading. Among them, fading affects the received power due to different communication models depending on whether direct waves are available for communication or not. Since space elevator-based communications can be regarded as low earth orbit satellite communications and fixed communications due to the nature of space elevators, fading models are an important factor in evaluating the communications performance of space elevators, assuming actual communications. In this study, a communication model for each city model was obtained from data of real cities. Using the communication model, the communication performance of the space elevator was evaluated for each city model.