In free-space optical (FSO) communications, increasing the peak power of a transmission beam is important to extend the communication range. In fiber-optic communications, transmission losses are compensated by an optical fiber amplifier in the transmission path. On the other hand, in space optical communications, fiber amplifiers cannot be used on the transmission path, so it is important to achieve high transmission power output. However, high power output from fiber amplifiers is limited by stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) due to fiber nonlinearity. One solution to this limitation is coherent beam combining (CBC), which spatially combines multiple laser beams in the far field. In general, to configure the CBC, the phase of each beam is detected by photodetectors and feedbacked to the transmission phase of each beam, resulting in a complex and large optical system. Therefore, a frequency dither signal is applied to each beam, and the phases of multiple beams are detected simultaneously by a single photodetector. Each beam is separated by its dither frequency. Typically, a plane-wave local beam is combined on all transmitted beams to obtain heterodyne beat signals. Therefore, to achieve higher peak power, the number of beams is increased, so the size of the optical system for emitting and combining the local beam is larger. We propose a configuration in which the local beam is combined into one of the transmitted beams and photoelectrically converted by a single photodetector with the other transmitted beams simultaneously. This can simplify the optical system by removing the optical components for emitting and combining the local beams. In this paper, we explain the proposed configuration and measurement results in detail and show their effectiveness.
The optical inter-satellite communication system with high-speed, small size and low power consumption is required because of increase of data capacity for observation satellites. Optical coherent technology has promising potential not only high sensitivity of communication systems but also high immunity against the back ground light for communication between satellites as well as between satellite and ground station. To realize a high-speed and small optical terminal, we have developed a coherent optical receiver that integrates optical angular sensor for spatial beam tracking in wavelength of 1.5 μm. The angular sensor is segmented photodiodes and it can detects the direction of arrival beam from a counterpart satellite by calculating the center of gravity of each output. The coherent optical frontend is a free-space optical 90-degree hybrid. By inputting the output light from coherent optical frontend to the segmented photodiodes, both orthogonal detection of communication signals and angle detection are achieved. The integrated coherent receiver is a size of 100 cm2. As a demonstration of coherent angle detection, we compared the results of simulation and actual measurement for angle detection using segmented photodiodes, and verified the validity of the design. We demonstrated orthogonal detection with this receiver by measuring the heterodyne beat output from the segmented photodiodes with cut-off frequency of 3.5 GHz, which corresponds to frequency difference between local and signal light. Applying this optical receiver to laser communication terminal, since it is not necessary to branch the received optical power to the capture and tracking sensor, the transmitted optical power required for communication can be reduced.
KEYWORDS: Digital signal processing, Signal to noise ratio, Receivers, Clocks, Forward error correction, Field programmable gate arrays, Optical amplifiers, Signal detection
A combination of the coherent detection and digital signal processing (DSP) deployed in spectrally-efficient optical fiber communications is being applied to free space optical (FSO) communications. The DSP enables adaptive frequency offset compensation between the transmitter and receiver laser diodes (LDs), and also the adaptive equalization of the non-ideal frequency response of the optical and electrical devices, by continuously updating values for the phase rotation angles and the coefficients of equalization. Due to atmospheric turbulence, the SNR can suddenly be reduced, so that the adaptation will diverge from its optimum. Then, even if the SNR recovers, it will take much longer than usual for the adaptation to re-converge because it will be starting from a diverged value. In this paper, we propose to control the calculations for updating the adaptation with a state machine based on a SNR estimated from the extracted clock amplitude. The updated values are periodically written into FIFO registers when the SNR is higher than the receiver threshold, and when the SNR degrades, we fix the values using the output of the FIFO registers. This prevents divergence of the adaptation and enables reuse of the values before divergence, taking into account the fact that estimating the SNR takes a finite time. We designed the proposed DSPs, and confirmed that these designs can be implemented in field programmable gate arrays (FPGA). In an offline experiment we evaluated this model of the proposed DSP design using a 2.5 Gbaud quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) signal. The experimental results showed that the proportion of error free time is increased from 91% to 98% by the proposed technique.
Optical coherent technology has been attractive for realizing optical satellite communication, optical beam-former and photonic payload in the future. The radiation resistant test of onboard components was also evaluated as the change of the optical output power, optical spectra and optical frequency noise before and after proton irradiation. As a result, there was no performance degradation due to an aluminum shield with thickness of 4 mm against the proton irradiation corresponding to 15 years of geostationary satellite orbit.
Micro vibrations generated from some internal disturbance sources such as a reaction wheel degrades the pointing stability of an observation satellite. To suppress the pointing error, we have been developing an inertial stabilization unit. A prototype mechanism is designed based on concepts that it has non-contact actuators and sensors, and rotational leaf springs are applied to support a stabilized platform in order to meet two requirements which are precise drive and tolerance for launch load. Two kind of inertial sensors are installed on the platform to measure the attitude directly. Each of these two inertial sensors covers low or high bandwidth signal respectively. These signals will be able to be combined as one wideband signal to stabilize the platform in inertial space. In this paper, the developing prototype mechanism and control equipment are described and the basic evaluation results are reported. Less than 0.3urad as a drive precision and more than 100Hz as a local sensor control bandwidth are verified. The development of the system has not completely finished yet, but the basic performance is certified to meet the design specification. From now on, we continue to develop the unit. These future results can be applied to inter-satellite laser communication system.
Recently, we have developed the high output power laser amplifier using Er,Yb:glass planar waveguide in order to
increase the measurable range of our 1.5 μm coherent Doppler LIDAR (CDL). In this paper, we introduce this
development and demonstration of a long range wind sensing using the developed system. The transmitted pulse has a
peak power of 2.4 kW and a width of 580 ns (i.e. pulse energy of 1.4 mJ) with a pulse repetition frequency of 4 kHz, in
addition to a nearly diffraction limited beam quality. With this laser amplifier, we demonstrate the measurable range of
more than 30 km. According to our own research, this is the longest measurable range demonstration for wind sensing
CDLs.
We have developed a 1.5-μm eye-safe wavelength high average power laser amplifier using an Er,Yb:glass planar
waveguide for coherent Doppler LIDAR. Large cooling surface of the planar waveguide enabled high average power
pumping for Er,Yb:glass which has low thermal fracture limit. Nonlinear effects are suppressed by the large beam size
which is designed by the waveguide thickness and the beam width of the planar direction. Multi-bounce optical path
configuration and high-intensity pumping provide high-gain and high-efficient operation using three-level laser material.
With pulsed operation, the maximum pulse energy of 1.9 mJ was achieved at the repetition rate of 4 kHz. Output average
power of the amplified signal was 7.6W with the amplified gain of more than 20dB. This amplifier is suitable for
coherent Doppler LIDAR to enhance the measurable range.
In this paper, high frame-rate Shack Hartmann wavefront sensor with a C-MOS image sensor is presented. To realize
high data rate wavefront sensor we adopted the flexible read out technique on C-MOS sensor, which makes it possible to
reduce not only the amount of Hartmann spot but also image size. In the preliminary experiments, we have successfully
obtained 10x10-Hartmann diagram with a rate of 4 kHz, leading to a high frame-rate wavefront sensor.
This paper presents Bread Board Model (BBM) of coherent homodyne receiver with an optical phase locked loop and a
frequency compensator of Doppler shifts for inter satellite optical communication link. 2.5Gbps BPSK data has been
demodulated with sensitivity of -49.1dBm at bit rate of 1e-6 under initial frequency offset of +/-7 GHz simulated as
Doppler shifts due to variation of distance between each satellite.
KEYWORDS: Signal to noise ratio, Doppler effect, Signal processing, LIDAR, Signal detection, Sensing systems, Interference (communication), Telescopes, Switches, Attenuators
In this paper, a new signal processing method named SCCI (Self- Compensated Coherent Integration) which enables a coherent integration over a longer time, compared to a coherence time of a back-scattered signal, is proposed. A back-scattered signal is gated by a constant time gate of which a gate time is set to be shorter than a coherence time. Each gated signal is sampled as a former and a latter part. A gated signal in each part is integrated coherently by FFT. A cross spectrum of two parts is calculated in each time gate. Since a phase of a cross spectrum in each time gate is constant, this process is identified to a self-phase-compensation. A cross spectrum is integrated over all time gates. This process is identified to a coherent integration of a back-scattered signal over a signal length which is longer than a coherence time, since a phase of a cross spectrum in each time gate is constant. The signal to noise ratio (SNR) for SCCI is theoretically higher than that for PDI (Post Detection Integration) in the case of N>16/SNRP2 (N: Gate number, SNRp: SNR of a time gate for PDI) at low SNR. SCCI is superior to PDI in every case at low SNR if a required SNR in a system is up to 6dB and a Doppler frequency of a back-scattered signal is constant in a signal length. Furthermore, if SNRP becomes lower and lower, and a required SNR is higher and higher compared to 6dB, the effect of using SCCI appears more and more distinctly. We confirm the effect experimentally using a 1.5-µm wind sensing lidar system. Keywords: Coherent lidar, Coherent integration, Coherence time, Signal division, Self-compensation, Doppler frequency, Wind sensing, SNR, SCCI, PDI
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