Advanced Space Laser Communication Technology on CubeSats

The free space optical communication plays an important role in space-terrestrial integrated network due to its advantages including great improvement of data rate performance,low cost,security enhancement when compared with conventional radio frequency(RF) technology.Meanwhile,CubeSats become popular in low earth orbit(LEO) network because of the low cost,fast response and the possibility of constituting constellations and formations to execute missions that a single large satellite cannot do.However,it is a difficult task to build an optical communication link between the CubeSats.In this paper,the cuttingedge laser technology progress on the CubeSats is reviewed.The characters of laser link on the CubeSat and the key techniques in the laser communication terminal(LCT) design are demonstrated.

Application Research on Space Laser Communication in Bistatic Radar System

There exist three synchronizing problems in the bistatic radar system that some signals of the radar receiver must be synchronized with those of the radar transmitter. Several methods realizing data transmission, which are used to complete the synchronization existing in the bistatic radar system, are described. Then a new idea is brought forward that employs space laser communication in the bistatic radar system to realize its data transmission. The theoretic analysis of the idea's usability and its merits are discussed in details. Finally the latest development of space laser communication is introduced, and the utility of the idea is pointed out further.

Acquisition,Pointing and Tracking System for Shipborne Space Laser Communication without Prior Information

A space laser communication acquisition,pointing and tracking(APT)system based on the beacon laser is designed without prior information.And then,a new target scanning method and a pointing and tracking algorithm are proposed.The target scanning mode is the round-trip triangular wave scanning,and it means that scanning track of the PAN-TILT platform follows the triangular wave repeatedly.For the pointing and tracking algorithm,the beacon laser is used as the auxiliary aiming light source.The position of the beacon laser in the viewfield of the complementary metal oxide semiconductor(CMOS)camera is calculated by the centroid algorithm.In order to realize the target tracking,the joint control method of the angle control and the angular velocity control is used.The simulation and experimental results show that the APT system can achieve full coverage scanning in the scanning area and capture the target in one scanning cycle successfully.After capturing the PAN-TILT platform,the pointing and tracking algorithm can track the PAN-TILT platform quickly and accurately,and the tracking accuracy is up to 0.22 mrad.

Acquisition and Tracking Technology for Space Laser Communication

The divergence angle of laser beam used in space laser communication is usually no more than 100μrad.Using laser beam with small divergence angle to achieve acquisition and tracking for space laser link has always been a difficult problem.In addition,the random nature of the atmosphere will affect the satellite-ground laser link,which increases the difficulty of the acquisition and stable tracking for the laser link.Thus,taking into account the above challenges for satellite-ground laser communication,an acquisition and tracking scheme of using both beacon beam and signal beam was designed for the Laser Communication Terminal(LCT)of Shijian 20 satellite.In-orbit test results indicated that under the condition of moderate atmospheric turbulence(atmospheric coherence length r0≈3 cm),the process of acquisition and tracking for the satellite-ground laser link can be completed within 1 s after the initial pointing between the LCT and Optical Ground Station(OGS)is performed,and the tracking error was less than 1μrad(3σ).In addition,the laser link can be re-established quickly once being interrupted by unsteady atmospheric turbulence,and can be maintained for a long time under moderate twurbulence conditions,which lays a foundation for future application of satellite-ground laser communication.

Direct phase control method for binary phase-shift keying space coherent laser communication

An optical phase locking method based on direct phase control is proposed.The core of this method is to synchronize the carrier by directly changing the phase of the local beam.The corresponding experimental device and the supporting algorithm were configured to verify the feasibility of this method.Phase locking can be completed without cycle skipping,and the acquisition time is 530 ns.Without an optical preamplifier,a sensitivity of-34.4 d Bm is obtained,and the bit error rate is 10^(-9) for 2.5 Gbit/s binary phase-shift keying modulation.The measured standard deviation of the phase error is 5.2805°.

Wide angle space laser communication receiver based on asymmetric array structure

In this paper, an asymmetric array structure of space laser communication receiver is proposed. This structure can greatly reduce alignment requirement, and lighten the signal strength jitter caused by atmospheric turbulence. A prototype of the proposed structure is fabricated and a 2.5 Mbit/s on-off keying(OOK) modulated demonstration link over 40 m free space is built. This asymmetric array structure can effectively collect optical signal while rotating in a window angle of ±17°, and the bit error ratio(BER) keeps zero.