Reconfigurable/Cognitive Optical Communications

As the number of optical communication terminals proliferate there will be a need to have these terminals interoperate.  In the past, optical terminals were designed with a single purpose in mind.  New space constellations are requiring non-RF crosslink solutions.  It is expected that there will be a large number of both commercial and military systems providing crosslinks and space to earth links.  With this new proliferation of optical terminals there is a desire to solve the interoperability problem to allow every terminal to interoperate.  Currently laser communication systems are limited to utilize unique terminals, modulation, data rates and protocols.  Here we are developing a reconfigurable/cognitive optical communications testbed to demonstrate this interoperability.  This effort will develop and demonstrate laser communications with both a DoD laser terminal and a commercial ground terminal.  The goal is to provide a common communications technique for dissimilar laser terminals to communicate and enable cross platform and cross domain communications.