Low-Impact Air-to-Ground Free-Space Optical Communication System Design and First Results

TL;DR

This paper presents the design and initial results of a low-impact air-to-ground free-space optical communication system focusing on minimizing payload and improving pointing accuracy.

Contribution

It introduces a novel system design with a MEMS retroreflector and a new liquid crystal-based fine pointing technique for air-to-ground optical links.

Findings

System design successfully minimizes payload size and power.

First implementation of liquid crystal fine pointing technique.

Initial results demonstrate promising system performance.

Abstract

An air-to-ground free-space optical communication system has been designed and partially developed. The design covers both the communications between the airborne and the ground station, and the acquisition, tracking and pointing. A strong effort has been made in order to achieve the minimum payload power, size and weight, for which a MEMS modulating retroreflector has been chosen. In the ground station, a new technique for fine pointing, based on a liquid crystal device, is proposed and will be demonstrated, as well as other improvements with the aim of optimizing the ground station performance.