High Power Optical Amplifiers and WDM Intelligent Optical Network Components for Multiband Inter-Satellite Communications

This Phase II SBIR Program will investigate and demonstrate the feasibility of extending OptiComp’s (OCC) intelligent distributed data communications architecture and optoelectronic (OE) interconnect technology to inter-satellite data communication systems. OCC’s proprietary optoelectronic interconnect technology provides multiband optical communication by integrating multi-wavelength VCSEL and resonance cavity photodetector arrays with shared optical waveguides, while in-line semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOA) are incorporated to provide either distributed optical gain within satellites or to provide output/input power amplification for intersatellite communication. Together they enable a seamless inter-satellite and intra-satellite optical network architecture that provides low-latency, fault-tolerant and protocol-independent switching between network nodes under distributed routing control. The new transmitter/receiver design will monolithically integrate high performance SOAs with OCC’s OE modules to boost the WDM signals before transmission or to pre-amplify them before photodetection. Optical amplification increases the system margin and compensates optical losses, thereby extending the number of nodes that can be interconnected without intermediate optical-to-electrical-to-optical conversion. The SOA can also provide sufficient optical amplification to transmit WDM optical signals facross much larger intersatellite link distances. Different SOA designs for both inter-satellite links and intra-satellite networks will be investigated.