Saraswati Coherent Optical Receiver (SCORE)

The Saraswati Coherent Optical Relay Element (SCORE) has the capability to achieve a 2X sensitivity improvement over the state-of-the-art high capacity free-space communications systems (DPSK) currently under development. The SCORE system utilizes very innovative signal processing at the optical physical layer to achieve the very high sensitivity level at transmission rates greater than 40Gb/s per wavelength and beyond. The primary goal of this Phase II program is to develop a SCORE system design that can achieve a world-record sensitivity of better than 15 photons/bit at data rates of 40 Gb/s per wavelength and higher. Saraswati will build a laboratory unit SCORE system to validate all significant impairment terms and to demonstrate end-to-end performance. The baseline SCORE system will be bi-phase shift keying (BPSK). Once the baseline laboratory work has been completed, we will modify the lab unit to demonstrate quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) coherent optical transmission which will deliver twice the spectrum efficiency. The Saraswati team has decades of experience in the design, development, test and fielding of complex spaceborne electro-optical hardware and has an extremely good track record in transitioning ideas developed under the SBIR program into hardware for military customers.