KEYWORDS: Data transmission, Optical transmission, Telecommunications, Space operations, Satellites, Wireless communications, Optical communications, Data communications, Power consumption
The current on-board communication network in spacecrafts requires a significant amount of wires, leading to relevant issues in cost and occupied volume. Optical Wireless Communication (OWC) can eliminate the need for physical cables, reducing installation and maintenance costs and improving system flexibility. We propose and demonstrate an OWC system that provides wireless data transfer among the electronic units within the satellite. The system is now successfully operated with two popular wired communication protocols on satellites, i.e., CAN-bus and MIL-STD-1553B. It has completed backward compatibility with existing protocols. Moreover, as it requires no DSP, it results in an extremely small footprint and low power consumption. It can effectively reduce the overall weight and cost of the spacecraft data network, offering the potential for a groundbreaking change in spacecraft technology.
The MIL-STD-1553B is one of the most used data buses for communication over aircraft and satellites. It requires a large amount of cables to connect all the onboard devices, therefore one of the most challenging issues in Spacecrafts (SCs) design is how to arrange all of them. Moreover, these wired communication systems represent up to 10% of the total mass of the satellite, introducing constraints on the cost of the mission launch and reducing the available room inside the satellite. We present here a novel system that can transport the MIL-STD-1553B signal over optical wireless, effectively removing wired connections. This can save weight and space while maintaining high performance and backward compatibility. We achieved these results by developing an innovative transceiver (TRX) board. The presented Optical Wireless Communication (OWC) system does not suffer from sniffing/jamming or from multipath interference. Moreover, it encompasses only Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) components, so that no special technological development is needed and we can keep its cost low. Here, we first shortly summarize our approach and then discuss how it can be used to deploy OWC links over a SC. To this aim, our system can interface the MIL-STD-1553B data bus with the OWC devices without any modification of the protocol and of the bus architecture.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.