Abstract
We are presenting the concept, design and construction of an optical receiver of the space segment for the time transfer ground to space using optical pulses and photon counting detection. Laser time transfer link is under construction for the European Space Agency (ESA) for its application in the experiment Atomic Clock Ensemble in Space (ACES). The device is expected to be launched toward the International Space Station in 2013. The objective of this laser time transfer is the synchronization of the ground based clocks and the clock on board the station with precision of the order of units of picoseconds and the accuracy of 50 picoseconds. The photon counting approach has been selected for on-board optical detection in order to reduce the systematic biases as much as possible. However, the background photon flux of the solar light scattered by the Earth atmosphere and the Earth surface with wide field of view is a challenge in the optical detector design. The optical receiver concept and the first experiment results of indoor tests are presented.
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