A novel ground-based receiver for EDRS
Donatas Miklusis, Zoran Sodnik · 2020
Within the frame of European Data Relay System (EDRS) upgrades, ESA is developing technologies for reliable optical communication links through atmospheric turbulence. This includes adaptive optics for wave-front correction on the downlink (and pre-distortion on the uplink), but a promising alternative to adaptive optics is a self-homodyne multimode differential phase shift interferometer, which doesn’t require phase-integrity of the incoming signal. Moreover, a custom-made avalanche photo detector (APD) with 80μm active area was developed for efficient conversion into an electrical signal. Field test were carried out from ESA’s optical ground station (OGS) with a laser communication terminal (LCT) onboard the Alphasat satellite in geosynchronous orbit.