Abstract
<jats:p>We demonstrate that jointly optimising physical, link and network layers can significantly enhance the capacity and/or availability of bidirectional optical links between ground to geostationary satellites through atmospheric optical turbulence. We model link capacity under realistic optical turbulence conditions from 25 different locations over the span of one year and evaluate trade-offs between adaptive optics correction (physical layer), data interleaving (link layer) and location diversity (network layer) of ground stations. At individual sites interleaving of 20-50 ms can be effective, however networking of 2-4 ground stations with adaptive optics, taking advantage of the spatial decorrelation of turbulence conditions, is sufficient to almost completely mitigate turbulence without any interleaving.</jats:p>