On an Intelligent Hierarchical Routing Strategy for Ultra-Dense Free Space Optical Low Earth Orbit Satellite Networks

As an essential 6G component, the Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite communication has aroused increasing attentions from academia and industry to provide seamless and highly-efficient networking services. However, existing routing strategies are primarily designed for terrestrial networks or small-scale satellite networks, making it inapplicable to future LEO satellite constellations of ultra density, high dynamics, and large scale. Moreover, since Free Space Optical (FSO) communications have been expected for Inter-satellite Links (ISLs) and the number of constructed FSO ISLs depends on the Acquisition, Pointing, and Tracking (APT) terminals and geometric visibilities, the routing algorithm needs to be…