An absolute distance measurement sensor based on self-mixing interferometry (SMI) is suitable for application in aerospace due to its small size and light weight. However, an SMI signal with a high sampling rate places a burden on sampling devices and other onboard sources. SMI distance measurement using compressed sensing (CS) is proposed in this work to relieve this burden. The SMI signal was sampled via a measurement matrix at a sampling rate lower than Nyquist’s law and then recovered by the greedy pursuit algorithm. The recovery algorithm was improved to increase its robustness and iteration speed. On a distance measuring system with a measurement error of 60 µm, the difference between raw data with 1800 points and CS recovered data with 300 points was within 0.15 µm, demonstrating the feasibility of SMI distance measurement using CS.

Advancements in Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) technology facilitate ubiquitous network access for users, whereas satellite-based Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) offers a viable solution for long-distance quantum key exchange in scenarios lacking terrestrial network infrastructure. This study explores the feasibility and practical utility of integrating NTN technology with satellite-based QKD and proposes a novel quantum-enhanced security framework for next-generation space–terrestrial networks. We have developed and deployed the first-of-its-kind 5G-enabled (fifth generation mobile communication) NTN prototype system leveraging satellite-based QKD key encryption. This system comprises a quantum satellite system, a communication satellite system, a 5G network infrastructure, and end-to-end encryption/decryption modules, aiming to validate the feasibility and usability of the proposed quantum-encrypted NTN security framework. Comprehensive tests and performance evaluations were carried out on the testbed constructed based on this prototype system, which collected critical Quality of Experience (QoE) metrics, including Round-Trip Time (RTT) and jitter, during user-plane ping measurements. Experimental results demonstrate that the integration of quantum encryption capabilities incurs an RTT overhead of 5 ms (0.75%), a necessary trade-off for systems incorporating supplementary quantum-encrypted transmission. Concurrently, the deployment of Virtual Private Network (VPN) infrastructure mitigates network jitter by 50%. These results hold critical theoretical and practical implications for the development of next-generation NTN security frameworks enabled by satellite-based QKD.