Use of satellite natural vibrations to improve performance of free-space satellite laser communication

Abstract

In some of the future laser communication satellites, it is plausible to assume that tracking and communication receivers will use the same detector array. The reason for dual use of the detector is to design simpler and less expensive satellites. Satellites vibrate continually because of their subsystems and environmental sources. The vibrations cause nonuniform spreading of the received energy on the detector array. In view of this, the information from the tracking system is used to adapt individually the communication signal gain of each of the detectors in the array. This adaptation of the gains improves communication system performance. It is important to emphasize that the communication performance improvement is achieved only by gain adaptation. Any additional vibrations decrease the tracking and laser pointing system performances, which decrease the return communication performances (two-way communication). A comparison of practical communication systems is presented. The novelty of this research is the utilization of natural satellite vibrations to improve the communication system performance.