Free Space Optics Ship to Ship Network Communication Capability

"Theater logistics, security, and Command and Control all require communication of huge amounts of tactical information and sensor data in order to locate the enemy and his assets, identify vulnerable targets, and prevent friendly casualties by neutralizingthreats before they can inflict damage. Moderate range ship-to-ship communications can use free space optics (FSO) to take advantage of the unregulated infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum to minimize or eliminate RF emissions. We propose toinvestigate the feasibility of developing a Free Space Optics (FSO) Ship to Ship Network Communication system that can be used to form a nominally 50 km range, variable data rate, non line-of-sight connection to facilitate secure and interference freecommunications between moving ships. The FSO system is based on a novel building-block transceiver implementation to integrate all of the necessary features into a small, rugged package suitable for ship and small UAV installation. As envisioned, thesystem would provide: ship-to-ship line-of-slight (LOS) communications, ship to aircraft and ashore communications (Non-LOS), accommodate a variable-speed data rate to operate reliably in all kinds of weather (from 100 Mbps to 64Kbps), and operate in theeye-safe 1550nm wavelength region of the spectrum. Relevant near-term applications are present in both military and commercial markets. They include: High bandwidth data communications betw