SOLISS is designed for technology demonstration of small laser communication terminal connecting to optical ground station from International Space Station (ISS) and its name came from Small Optical Link for ISS. It was successfully launched on 25th Sep., 2019 and achieved to demonstrate bi-directional communication as its extra success. SOLISS is jointly developed with Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and also jointly developed special functions of optical ground station with National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT). We discuss and report in-orbit demonstration and its result.
In recent years, optical communication protocols resilient to atmospheric disturbances for near-Earth have been discussed in Consultative Committee for Space Data System (CCSDS). We proposed our Forward Error Correction (FEC) format to the committee to provide a better option with a balance of its complexity and performance. The FEC consists of Reed-Solomon product code (RS-PC) which is robust to burst error and has been adopted as an optical disc format because they are commonly suffering from burst error caused by scratch, fingerprint, and other materials which disturb laser light. We considered the feature was also be able to be applied to the burst error correction of fading due to atmospheric disturbance and successfully demonstrated optical Ethernet communication by using proposed FEC between International Space Station and optical ground station which is located in Japan. However, the performance of RS-PC for free-space optical communication was not discussed quantitatively yet. Here we discuss the proposed FEC format structure in detail and its Bit Error Rate (BER) curve simulated under the condition of the fading channel. We also discuss the robustness of burst error can be adjusted in correspondence with the condition of the atmosphere channel by concatenating multiple FEC blocks. Furthermore, the BER performance can be improved without changing the FEC format itself by applying iterative correction and erasure correction. The simulation result shows the proposed FEC can realize better performance compared with a single Reed- Solomon code. In terms of error correction capability, soft-decision codes such as Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) and Serial Concatenated Convolutional Codes (SCCC) provide a better performance, but the advantage of RS-PC is that it can be implemented with smaller and less power consuming circuits than these FECs. It shows the proposed FEC format can be a promising approach especially for an in-orbit solution which supports limited power resource.
Laser communication is an expected approach to realize a high data rate communication on small, micro and even cube satellites. Sony and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) had experimentally verified fundamental functions of the small optical communication terminal with optical disk technology that is needed for miniaturization of light-weight and low power consumption laser communication terminals. To verify these functions from the optical disk technology in orbit as a laser communication system, Sony Computer Science Laboratories, Inc. (Sony CSL) and JAXA had jointly developed the small optical communication terminal called SOLISS from late 2017 that designed to be attached to the exposed facility of International Space Station (ISS) and it was successfully launched from Tanegashima in Japan on 25th September 2019. This experimentation aims to confirm 100 Mbps Ethernet-based laser communication establishment between low-Earth orbit and the ground and the availability of pointing control with the optical disk technology in-orbit. To achieve the goal, SOLISS continuously controls the accurate pointing with a coarse and fine pointing mechanism to keep the establishment of the optical link with a counterpart. In this experimentation, SOLISS successfully established the bidirectional Ethernet-based link with a PC connected to the optical ground station of National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) by its pointing mechanism. The result demonstrated the availability of the proposed pointing mechanism. This article discusses the pointing performance of SOLISS with the optical ground station.
Recent technology trends of cost reduction of launch and satellite miniaturization are leading cutting-edge applications such as earth observation and communication with satellite constellation. Miniaturization of the communication terminal, light weight and low power consumption are required to the communication terminal on small satellites. Free space optical communication is expected approach to realize high data rate communication system on small satellites. Sony and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) have experimentally verified the fundamental functions of the small optical communication terminal with optical disk technology for small satellites since 2016. Following this basic study, Sony Computer Science Laboratories, Inc. (Sony CSL) has jointly studied in orbit experiment of the small optical communication terminal with JAXA. To verify its functions in-orbit promptly, we have tried to utilize IVA-replaceable Small Exposed Experiment Platform(i-SEEP) attached to Japanese Experiment Module (JEM) on International Space Station (ISS). The developed small optical communication terminal (SOLISS) is connected to i-SEEP and SOLISS is designed to verify bi-directional communication with free-space optical technology capable of 100 Mbps Ethernet frame data transfer between SOLISS and the optical ground station. For the optical ground station connecting with SOLISS, Sony CSL also conducts a joint research project with National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT). To establish the optical communication link, telemetry and commanding through ISS, controlling of the optical ground station and SOLISS are designed. This article discusses the system architecture for in-orbit experimentation of bi-directional optical communication between SOLISS and the optical ground station.
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