The small optical user terminal (SOUT) is part of an experimental program of the European Space Agency, initiated by British Aerospace. One takes advantage of the high antenna gain obtainable at 830 nm to build a very small, lightweight, and comparatively low cost terminal, capable of communicating with SILEX, ESA's full scale optical telecommunication program. SPACEBEL is in charge of developing the transmitting chain of the SOUT, and demonstrating its performances on a breadboard model. In the first part of the paper, we describe the transmitting chain of SOUT, stressing the delicate optical link between the diode and the monomode fiber. In the second part of the paper, we report on the first measurement of the efficiency of the coupling between the laser diode and the fiber as measured on the engineering model of the flight design for the Silex Beacon.
A beacon developed and breadboarded by the SPACEBEL Instrumentation in the framework of the ESA Semiconducter Intersatellite Experiment (Silex) is described. The Silex Beacon is a powerful source aboard the GEO terminal, used by the LEO terminal to locate the latter. The paper describes the general architecture of the Silex Beacon and the flight model design and discusses the future developments. The far field pattern obtained by the breadboard is presented.
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