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A. Sinn, T. Riel, F. Deisl, R. Saathof, G. Schitter:
"Low-Power Reflective Optical Communication System for Pico- and Nano-Satellites";
Poster: Advanced Maui Optical Space Surveillance Technologies Conference (AMOS) 2016, Wailea, Hawaii (USA); 20.09.2016 - 23.09.2016; in: "AMOS 2016 Proceedings", (2016), S. 1403 - 1410.

Pico- and nano-satellites (PNS) are promising options for cost-effective and rapid deployable satellite systems. Due to their small size, the available power and therefore the transmittable data volume is limited. This paper proposes optical communication by means of reflected laser light using a modulating retro-reflector (MRR) for energy efficient optical communication with PNS. No laser source or beam steering assembly is necessary at the satellite, thus allowing a weight and energy efficient communication interface. Existing ground stations (GS) as used for satellite laser ranging (SLR) provide all equipment required for this system. By providing a link budget for communication to PNS in LEOs feasibility is investigated. It is shown that an affordable GS based on small telescopes with diameters below 0.3m in combination with commercial mounts enables the targeted application. A detailed analysis of LCD based MRRs is shown, denoting cost-efficient modulators for reflective optical communication. A data-rate of 2.5kbps at an input power of less than 80 mW is shown in a laboratory setup. Using a high performance sampling circuit and a laser power of only 1mW, a bit error ratio (BER) of below 10e-3 is achieved, successfully demonstrating reflective optical communication as an alternative to current RF based systems.

https://publik.tuwien.ac.at/files/publik_252989.pdf