State the convergence directly: the laser links between satellites are starting to look like fiber-optic networks that happen to run through vacuum. Ciena, a terrestrial optical-networking company, is bringing coherent optics and mesh-network thinking to space, which tells you the inter-satellite link has matured into a real networking problem, not just a point-to-point novelty.
The grant US11799549B2 (inventors Michael Y. Frankel and Vladimir Pelekhaty), classified in H04B 10/118 (free-space optical communication) with H04B 10/27 (optical networks), claims express mesh inter-satellite optical coherent networking. Express in a mesh means paths that skip intermediate hops, the same traffic-engineering idea that speeds up terrestrial backbones.
The mechanism's payoff is capacity and latency. Coherent optics carry vastly more data than radio links, and a mesh with express paths lets traffic take efficient routes through the constellation rather than relaying hop-by-hop. For a global constellation moving real internet traffic, the inter-satellite layer becomes the backbone, and its efficiency sets the system's performance.
Read alongside Huawei's machine-vision-assisted link acquisition (US11799548B2), granted the very same day, and Intel's later ultra-low-latency inter-satellite links (US12278690B2, 2025), the picture is of a fast-maturing subfield: pointing and acquiring the laser links, then networking them efficiently, then squeezing latency. The optical backbone of space was being engineered in earnest.
The caution is operational difficulty. Coherent optical links between fast-moving satellites are hard to acquire and hold, and a mesh's value depends on those links staying up. The patent describes the network architecture; whether the physical links are reliable enough to realize the express-mesh promise is a question the constellation, not the claim, answers.