Abstract
The telecommunications of the future rely on the concept of a three-dimensional architecture able to integrate terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks with the goal to ensure a reliable and high-speed connectivity to users located anywhere. In this context, free space optical communications constitute a candidate technology for feeder links, thanks to their advantages in terms of bandwidth and achievable data rates. Nonetheless, due to the propagation impediments encountered by an optical beam travelling through atmosphere, flexible and accurate instruments able to support the design of optical feeder links are needed. Therefore, in this paper a link budget numerical tool able to meet these requirements is presented and the link budget analysis for real optical feeder links is performed demonstrating its prediction accuracy by means of the comparison with experimental results for both low Earth orbit and geostationary Earth orbit based configurations. Finally, the limits of the conventional beam wander model are analyzed and overcome.