Interplanetary laser communications and precision ranging

Abstract

Future interplanetary missions, including robotic probes and human travel, will require significantly enhanced communications bandwidth that will be difficult to realize with current radio/microwave frequency links. Besides satisfying this requirement, optical (laser) communications has the potential for substantially lowering mass, power, and volume burden on the host spacecraft; is free from spectrum allocation issues; and can potentially support tracking functions resulting in improved spacecraft navigation. Primary challenges of optical communications include precision laser beam pointing over the huge planetary range, inefficiency of laser transmitters, quantum noise limited detection, especially in presence of additive background during periods of near Sun pointing, atmospheric degradation due to attenuation and turbulence and weather outages. This paper will briefly review the status of technologies that have been devised to meet these challenges and system-level developments for bi-directional telecommunications and ranging to distant probes.

Semiconductor Quantum Dot Photodetector for High Speed Space Optical Communication

“…Nevertheless, there are still a great variety of problems in satellite optical communication, like power consuming, light power high loss, delayed pointing and acquisition and tracking (so-called PAT system). Primary challenges of optical communications include precision laser beam pointing over the huge planetary range, inefficiency of laser transmitters, quantum noise limited detection, especially in presence of additive background during periods of near sun pointing, atmospheric degradation due to attenuation and turbulence and weather outage [13] .…”

Conical refraction multiplexing for free-space optical communications

“…FSO by laser means is believed to deliver the highest efficiency and data rate (bandwidth and capacity) for any FSO channel. These advantages become more crucial for deep-space communications [1] although laser optical links could be even considered as an alternative (or a supplementary tool/channel) to radio frequency and fiber optics communications for some terrestrial applications.…”

Study of Fiber Coupling Efficiency and Adaptive Optics Correction Technique in Atmospheric Slant-Range Channels

“…Laser communication technology has the advantages of wide bandwidth, large capacity, compact terminal structure, low power consumption, anti-eavesdropping, and anti-jamming [1], and has been gradually applied to military defense [2,3] civilian emergency communication [4] satellite communication [5][6][7] and deep space exploration [8][9][10] and many other fields have become new research hotspots in the field of communication . However, when the laser communication link is transmitted through the atmosphere, due to the presence of atmospheric turbulence effect leads to serious interference with the communication performance and stability of laser communication [11,12].…”