Test results of the optical PAT test bed for satellite laser communications

Abstract

Satellite laser communication systems offer many advantages such as high data rate, small sized equipment, low consumption electric power and others. Recent successful demonstrations of laser communications have demonstrated the feasibility of some of the key aspects of this technology. Sub-microradian pointing, acquisition, and tracking (PAT) functions are key issue to establish the laser communication system in space. The terminals must perform a series of onground test to evaluate characteristics of The PAT performances before flight test. So an optical dynamical PAT test bed is developed to perform ground test of a laser terminal. In this paper, we detail the separate test and the system test results of the optical dynamical PAT test bed. The test was carried out by auto-collimation method, the precision deflect accuracy, scan accuracy and deflect scan accuracy are obtained.