We establish a viable laser payload design for the Orbiting Configurable Artificial Star (ORCAS) mission. We share observational considerations and derive the engineering requirements for the laser payload. Developed by general Atomics Electromagnetic Systems, the dual-wavelength laser will operate at 1064 nm and can be frequency-doubled to 532 nm, with two possible beam divergence modes and tunable power. The laser payload can be operated at pulse repetition rates greater than 10 kHz to enable compatibility with Adaptive Optics systems and to maintain pointing requirements. We show that such a laser payload can be constructed based upon a high-TRL amplified fiber laser Communication Terminal modified to meet the mission requirements.
General Atomics Electromagnetics (GA-EMS) has developed a free space optical laser communication terminal (LCT) for space applications. The system operates at 1550 nm and utilizes on-off keying to support a data rate of up to 5 Gbps. The system has undergone assembly, integration, and testing and is being integrated into the host spacecraft in preparation for an Optical Inter-Satellite Link (OISL) demonstration with the Space Development Agency. The OISL demonstration will consists of two GAEMS LCT systems on two separate cubesats to perform cross-link demonstrations at distances of up to 2500 km and also serve as an on-orbit platform to characterize pointing, acquisition, and tracking capabilities between the two terminals as well as out of plane links to other satellites. While the 2021 mission will highlight an OISL demonstration between to identical spacecraft, the hardware is designed for easy integration into various satellites by using common electrical and mechanical interfaces with the overall goal of having a bus agnostic LCT architecture in support of interoperability.
General Atomics Electromagnetics (GA-EMS) has developed a free space optical laser communication terminal (LCT) for space applications. The system operates at 1550 nm and utilizes on-off keying to support a data rate of up to 5 Gbps. The system architecture is expandable regarding total output power and can support links from various orbits up to and including GEO-GEO as predicted from the amplifier testing and link budget analysis. The amplifier is based off of a TRL9 system originally used by GA-EMS for airborne applications that has been redesigned for space applications and is currently TRL6 based on a TVAC test conducted in 2018. The system utilizes a software defined modulation scheme that can change between non-return to zero (NRZ) and return to zero (RZ) to support various cross link distances by transitioning between RZ and NRZ. While the current LCT uses OOK, the architecture can support multiple modulation schemes including DPSK, which was tested as part of the 2018 T-VAC test. The LCT uses a novel acquisition scheme which is introduced here that enables rapid acquisition for systems even when the bus level pointing accuracy is in excess of 350urad. This results in a bus agnostic LCT architecture that can be used on multiple mission without necessitating extensive redesign and qualification. GA-EMS plans to launch two of these terminals in cubesats to host an on orbit demonstration of crosslinks between the two terminals and downlinks to a ground station.
We consider general theoretical aspects of level crossings of multidimensional fluctuating functions. Examples of such functions are turbulent fields such as refractive-index functions or turbulence-aberrated fields such as laser intensity functions in free-space laser communications. From a practical point of view, it is important to consider level crossings because they correspond to the temporal instances or spatial occurrences of when or where a signal of interest reaches, exceeds, or falls below a particular threshold. For example, the statistics of level crossings for a laser communication signal at a threshold corresponding to the minimum detection signal are important in order to study the probability density of the extent of intervals of down-time for communication links. For 1-D signals, the concept of the level crossing scale is clear and well established as it is the extent of the interval between successive level crossings. However, for multidimensional fields, this concept cannot be utilized directly because it is not clear how to define or identify successive level crossings, and therefore level crossing scales, in multiple dimensions. We describe a theoretical formulation which enables a consistent definition of level crossing scales for multidimensional fields, i.e. consistent with the traditional 1-D definition. We use the recently-developed concept of the shortest-distance scale because the latter applies naturally to multiple dimensions. We define the probability density function of level crossing scales, in any number of dimensions, in terms of a derivative of the probability density function of shortest-distance scales. Analytically, we illustrate this approach using exact theoretical examples with 2-D objects and we also provide results for exponential, lognormal, and power-law level crossing statistics which are basic models for applications involving turbulence and free-space laser communications.
This work is part of an effort to investigate methodologies for active turbulence control of laser beam
propagation through separated flows relevant to airborne laser applications as well as to detect the turbulenceinduced
laser aberrations with Shack-Hartmann sensing. Large scale turbulence suppression control in
separated compressible flows is investigated as a means to directly reduce aero-optical aberrations in laser
propagation for airborne directed energy capabilities. Experiments are conducted on forced and unforced
large-Reynolds-number compressible separated shear layers. Flow forcing is realized using a custom-built
dielectric barrier discharge pulsed plasma actuator that can operate at elevated pressures. Results from flow
control experiments show significant reductions in the root-mean-square optical path difference depending on
the pulsed plasma actuator forcing frequency. Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor laser profiling is conducted
to measure directly the aero-optical aberrations. The flow conditions used in this research are Reynolds
number of 6 million, based on the visual thickness of the turbulent separated shear layer, a freestream Mach
number of 0.9, and an elevated test section pressure of 3 atm. The Shack-Hartmann sensor provides pathintegrated
information regarding the turbulent refractive field and interfaces that the laser wavefront
propagated through. Experimental comparison of control on vs. off cases indicates evidence showing the
effectiveness of pulsed plasma forcing for the direct reduction of the laser aberrations. Since the dominant
contributions to the aberrations, in unforced flows, are caused by large-scale organized structures, our
findings indicate that the mechanism by which the significant reduction is observed in the present forced
experiments is due to large-scale organized structure suppression effected by pulsed plasma forcing.
Laboratory experiments, computations, and physical modeling of laser wavefronts propagating through variable-refractive-index separated shear layers at large Reynolds numbers are conducted in order to examine the relation between the flow behavior and the laser wavefront behavior for airborne laser communications. The new
element of this work is the focus on the dependence on scale of the optical behavior as well as of the flow behavior, using multiresolution analysis of the measured and computed data. The experiments are conducted using the UC Irvine variable-pressure
turbulent flow facility. Direct non-intrusive imaging of the refractive index field is accomplished with laser-induced fluorescence and a high-resolution digital camera that resolves
three decades of scales. Simultaneously, direct imaging of the
propagated laser wavefront phase profile is conducted using a
Shack-Hartmann array sensor that also has a resolution of three decades of scales. The computational component consists of near-field wavefront propagation through the measured refractive index field, validated by the direct wavefront measurements. We
have conducted multiresolution analysis of the flow data and optical
data, by a posteriori reducing the resolution of the refractive-index field and phase field. We present evidence of strong scale dependence at large scales, i.e. in the
energy-containing range of scales. Physical modeling of this behavior is developed based on the structure of the coarse-grained refractive turbulent interfaces. This approach is useful in order to relate the root-mean-squared optical path difference and Strehl ratio, at variable resolutions, to the refractive-index variations along the laser wavefront propagation path. This facilitates the
identification of the dominant refractive interfaces and serves as a
guide to developing aero-optical optimization methods for airborne
laser communication applications.
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