Inter-satellite optical communications

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Miniaturized satellites, roughly the size of soccer balls, are revolutionizing access to space. Traditionally, the deployment of satellites costs many millions of dollars, which limits the development of satellites and satellite-based services to a few large corporations. Since the early 2000s, a standard for miniaturized satellites called "CubeSat" has emerged. Due to their small sizes and low cost, CubeSats can be developed at a much lower cost compared to traditional satellites, and their launch can be cost-shared. Thus, CubeSats are drastically reducing the cost of access to space by hundreds-fold. On the other hand, the size of the CubeSat imposes tight constraints on the weight, size, and power of the components that fit into the satellite. A network of CubeSats in low Earth orbit that can communicate with each other will enable the real-time global satellite coverage. Today, inter-satellite communication is usually done using radio-frequency signals, which would be too power hungry on small-sized satellites. Free-space optical communication has the potential to operate within the power limitations while enabling high data transmission rates. In collaboration with the partner company, we will design transmit and receive modules that fit into CubeSats for free-space optical communication links for energy-efficient, high-speed inter-satellite communications.