We report on the design, development, and testing of our high-power broadband optical modem supporting NASA’s crewed Artemis-2 mission. The O2O modem will be mounted in the crewed Orion module and provide a broadband 505,000 km bi-directional optical link back to earth while en route to the moon.
The full-duplex modem consists of a high-power optical transmitter and receiver optimized for serially-concatenated pulse-position modulation (SCPPM). The transmitter is a master-oscillator power-amplifier optical architecture using efficient cladding-pumped amplification in erbium-ytterbium co-doped fiber. The transmitter outputs up to 1 W at ≈1550 nm (limited for eye safety) and supports 6 different user-rates ranging from 20.39 Mb/s to 260.95 Mb/s using PPM16 and PPM32 modulation formats. The optical receiver supports two user-rates: 10.19 Mb/s and 20.39 Mb/s with both rates employing PPM32. The narrowband receiver filtering is optimized to simultaneously accept four separate wavelength channels to mitigate atmospherics through spatial diversity. A configurable interleaver provides additional protection against atmospherics-based signal fading and a powerful soft-decision error correction scheme enables highly sensitive detection. The measured sensitivities at the two bit-rates are -73.8 and -71.8 dBm, respectively.
The architecture was designed for reliable operation in space, featuring automatic hardware interlocks, pump sparing for the amplifiers, and autonomous operation of all internal hardware and software control loops. The protoflight unit (PFU) was put through rigorous environmental testing which included pyroshock, vibration, electromagnetic interference/compatibility, and thermal-vacuum testing. The modem successfully passed all the environmental screening and has been declared at Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 6.
Free-space optical communications links have the perpetual challenge of coupling light from free-space to a detector or fiber for subsequent detection. It is especially challenging to couple light from free-space into single-mode fiber (SMF) in the presence of atmospheric tilt due to its small acceptance angle; however, SMF coupling is desirable because of the availability of extremely sensitive digital coherent receivers developed by the fiber-telecom industry. In this work, we experimentally compare three-mode and single-mode coupling after propagating through 1.6 km of free-space with and without the use of a fast-steering mirror (FSM) control loop to mitigate atmospherically induced tilt. Here, the 3-mode fiber is a 3-mode photonic lantern multiplexer (PLM) that passively couples light into three SMF outputs. With the FSM control loop active, coupling into the PLM and the SMF yielded nearly identical coupling efficiencies, as expected. Experimental results with the FSM control loop off show that coupling from free-space to PLM increases the average power received, and mitigates the negative impacts of tilt-induced fading relative to coupling directly to SMF.
In recent years, NASA has been developing a scalable, modular space terminal architecture to provide low-cost laser communications for a wide range of near-Earth applications. This development forms the basis for two upcoming demonstration missions. The Integrated Low-Earth Orbit Laser Communications Relay Demonstration User Modem and Amplifier Optical Communications Terminal (ILLUMA-T) will develop a user terminal for platforms in low-Earth orbit which will be installed on the International Space Station and demonstrate relay laser communications via NASA’s Laser Communication Relay Demonstration (LCRD) in geo-synchronous orbit. The Orion EM-2 Optical Communication Demonstration (O2O) will develop a terminal which will be installed on the first manned launch of the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle and provide direct-to-Earth laser communications from lunar ranges. We describe the objectives and link architectures of these two missions which aim to demonstrate the operational utility of laser communications for manned exploration in cislunar space.
KEYWORDS: Atmospheric propagation, Receivers, Free space optics, Atmospheric optics, Free space optical communications, Digital signal processing, Free space, Signal to noise ratio, Composites, Telecommunications, Adaptive optics, Signal processing
The next generation free-space optical communications infrastructure will need to support a wide variety of space-to-ground links. As a result of the limited size, weight, and power on space-borne assets, the ground terminals need to scale efficiently to large collection areas to support extremely long link distances or high data rates. Recent advances in integrated digital coherent receivers enable the coherent combining (i.e., full-field addition) of signals from several small apertures to synthesize an effective single large aperture. In this work, we experimentally demonstrate the coherent combining of signals received by four independent receive chains after propagation through a 3:2-km atmospheric channel. Measured results show the practicality of coherently combining the four received signals via digital signal processing after transmission through a turbulent atmosphere. In particular, near-lossless combining is demonstrated using the technique of maximal ratio combining.
KEYWORDS: Forward error correction, Signal to noise ratio, Digital signal processing, Receivers, Modulation, Telecommunications, Free space optical communications, Transmitters, Data communications, Binary data
The next generation free-space optical (FSO) communications infrastructure will need to support a wide range of links from space-based terminals in low Earth orbit, geosynchronous Earth orbit, and deep space to the ground. Efficiently enabling such a diverse mission set requires an optical communications system architecture capable of providing excellent sensitivity (i.e., few photons-per-bit) while allowing reductions in data rate for increased system margin. Specifically, coherent optical transmission systems have excellent sensitivity and can trade data rate for system margin by adjusting the modulation format, the forward error correction (FEC) code rate, or by repeating blocks of channel symbols. These techniques can be implemented on a common set of hardware at a fixed system baud rate. Experimental results show that changing modulation formats between quaternary phase-shifted keying and binary phase-shifted keying enables a 3-dB scaling in data rate and a 3.5-dB scaling in system margin. Experimental results of QPSK transmission show a 5.6-dB scaling of data rate and an 8.9-dB scaling in system margin by varying the FEC code rate from rate-9/10 to rate-1/4. Experimental results also show a 45.6-dB scaling in data rate over a 41.7-dB range of input powers by block-repeating and combining a pseudorandom binary sequence up to 36,017 times.
KEYWORDS: Receivers, Free space optics, Digital signal processing, Optical communications, Free space optical communications, Transmitters, Signal to noise ratio, Clocks, Modulation, Binary data, Modulators
The next generation free-space optical (FSO) communications infrastructure will need to support a wide range of links from space-based terminals at LEO, GEO, and deep space to the ground. Efficiently enabling such a diverse mission set requires a common ground station architecture capable of providing excellent sensitivity (i.e., few photons-per-bit) while supporting a wide range of data rates. One method for achieving excellent sensitivity performance is to use integrated digital coherent receivers. Additionally, coherent receivers provide full-field information, which enables efficient temporal coherent combining of block repeated signals. This method allows system designers to trade excess link margin for increased data rate without requiring hardware modifications. We present experimental results that show a 45-dB scaling in data rate over a 41-dB range of input powers by block-repeating and combining a PRBS sequence up to 36,017 times.
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