High data rate inter‐satellite‐communication system SOLACOS

Abstract

We describe the realization of the Lasercomm on‐ground verification system SOLACOS and the current development status. SOLACOS comprises the hardware development of 2 optical terminals and the test infrastructure to test the performance of this system in on‐ground experiments.

In SOLACOS we implement a coherent 650 MBit/s transmission channel based on coherent Syncbit data transmission technology and on Nd \,{:}\, YAG solid state lasers, a diode‐laser based 10 MBit/s ASK transmission system and a fully functional PAT system for an inter‐orbit‐link application.

In parallel to the hardware activities, a computer simulation model of the system is realized. The main goal of SOLACOS is to match the predictions from the simulation to the real‐world results from the hardware.