UPLINK LASER BEACONS FOR DEEP-SPACE COMMUNICATION, CAN BENEFIT GREATLY FROM MIGRATION TO THE 1010-1030NM WA…

Public award description

UPLINK LASER BEACONS FOR DEEP-SPACE COMMUNICATION, CAN BENEFIT GREATLY FROM MIGRATION TO THE 1010-1030NM WAVELENGTHS, VIA USE OF SILICON-APDS ON THE SPACECRAFT RECEIVING TERMINAL. FIBERTEK HAS DEVELOPED AN UPLINK LASER TRANSMITTER TESTBED USING A MULTI-STAGE FIBER-MOPA PLATFORM, THAT IS ALSO SCALABLE TO A MULTI-APERTURE ARCHITECTURE. PRELIMINARY DEMONSTRATION FOR 1064NM OPERATION HAS SHOWN MULTI-KW PEAK POWERS USING LONG-PULSE SLOT(>100NSEC)BASED M-ARY PPM FORMAT. THE HIGHLY FLEXIBLE PLATFORM DEVELOPED AT FIBERTEK, ALSO CORRECTS FOR PULSE-SHAPING, AND PULSE-TRAIN VARIATIONS, INHERENT IN SUCH MULTI-KW LONG-PULSE VARIABLE-SYMBOOL PPM DATA-FORMAT. THIS SBIR PROPOSAL AIMS TO DEVELOP AND DEMONSTRATE THE FEASIBILITY OF A CLEAR TECHNICAL ROAD MAP TO TRANSLATE THIS TO SHORTER WAVELENGTHS<1030NM, AS WELL AS TO FURTHER OPTIMIZE THE UPLINK LASER BEACON TRANSMITTER FOR REPRESENTATIVE M-ARY PPM DATA FORMATS, USING FPGA BASED ADAPTIVE CONTROL.