Abstract
In recent years, the necessity of free-space optical (FSO) communications has increased as a method for realizing high-speed communications between satellites and the ground. However, one disadvantage of FSO communications is the significant influence of the atmosphere. Specifically, FSO communications cannot be utilized under certain atmospheric conditions, especially in the presence of clouds. One of the solutions to this problem is the site diversity technique, which makes it possible to select a given ground station with better atmospheric conditions among a number of fixed ground stations. The other solution is to prepare a ground station that can be moved to a place with better atmospheric conditions. We applied the latter method and developed a transportable optical ground station in NICT. We utilize a realistic telescope diameter, which is about 30 cm at the maximum, capable of being set up quickly, and with a pointing accuracy of about 100 µrad. In addition, it is necessary to prepare a fine-pointing optical system that performs tracking with about 1/10 of the pointing accuracy of the telescope. In this paper, we report the results of the first performance test of the transportable optical ground station in NICT.
Highlights
In order to accelerate the communication speed between satellites and ground stations, free-space optical (FSO) communications will be a key technique and the demand for FSO communication has greatly increased in the last few years [1]
After the manufacture of the transportable optical ground station (TOGS) was completed in January 2020, the first performance evaluation of coarse pointing system of the telescope was started in February 2020
We have been developing it under the concept that is discussed in Concept of Transportable Optical Ground Station, in which the TOGS can be deployed at any place, and the telescope is mounted on the vehicle
Summary
In order to accelerate the communication speed between satellites and ground stations, free-space optical (FSO) communications will be a key technique and the demand for FSO communication has greatly increased in the last few years [1]. FSO communications between space and ground is affected by the atmosphere, such as cloud blockages and atmospheric turbulence. One possible solution to mitigate the effect of cloud blockages is site diversity; a large number of fixed ground stations are usually required to be implemented. In case of emergency, FSO communications at an arbitrary location would be required, since fixed ground stations cannot respond to this situation. We proceed to develop a transportable optical ground station (TOGS), which can be moved to a place with better atmospheric conditions or a location requiring a communication site with space and able to deploy the functionality of an optical station. By NICT with a compact 2 × 2 × 4 m3 ground station being transportable with a truck and capable of 40 Gbit/s lasercom with an aircraft [4].
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