LOLA: a 40.000 km optical link between an aircraft and a geostationary satellite

Vincent Cazaubiel; Gilles Planche; Vincent Chorvalli; Lénaïc Le Hors; Bernard Roy; Emmanuel Giraud; Ludovic Vaillon; Francois Carre; Eric Decourbey

doi:10.1117/12.2308161

21 November 2017 LOLA: a 40.000 km optical link between an aircraft and a geostationary satellite

Vincent Cazaubiel, Gilles Planche, Vincent Chorvalli, Lénaïc Le Hors, Bernard Roy, Emmanuel Giraud, Ludovic Vaillon, Francois Carre, Eric Decourbey

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Proceedings Volume 10567, International Conference on Space Optics — ICSO 2006; 1056726 (2017) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2308161
Event: International Conference on Space Optics 2006, 2006, Noordwijk, Netherlands

Abstract

The LOLA program aims at characterising a 40.000 km optical link through the atmosphere between a high altitude aircraft and a geostationary platform. It opens a new area in the field of optical communications with moving platforms. A complete new optical terminal has been designed and manufactured for this program. The optical terminal architecture includes a specific pointing subsystem to acquire and stabilize the line of sight despite the induced vibrations from the aircraft and the moving pattern from the received laser signal. The optical configuration features a silicon carbide telescope and optical bench to ensure a high thermoelastic angular stability between receive and transmit beams. The communications subsystem includes fibered laser diodes developed in Europe and high performance avalanche photo detectors. Specific encoding patterns are used to maintain the performance of the link despite potential strong fading of the signal. A specific optical link model through the atmosphere has been developed and has been validated thanks to the optical link measurements performed between ARTEMIS and the Optical Ground Station located in the Canarian islands. This model will be used during the flight tests campaign that is to start this summer.

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Vincent Cazaubiel, Gilles Planche, Vincent Chorvalli, Lénaïc Le Hors, Bernard Roy, Emmanuel Giraud, Ludovic Vaillon, Francois Carre, and Eric Decourbey "LOLA: a 40.000 km optical link between an aircraft and a geostationary satellite", Proc. SPIE 10567, International Conference on Space Optics — ICSO 2006, 1056726 (21 November 2017); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2308161

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