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A Photon Counting Ground Receiver for Free-Space Optical CommunicationsThe National Aeronautics and Space Administration is developing a photon counting ground receiver for free-space optical communications. The receiver consists of a fiber interconnect, superconducting nanowire single photon counting detectors (SNSPDs), and a field programmable gate array (FPGA) based receive modem. This receiver is compliant with the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) Optical Communications High Photon Efficiency standard, which is used in the low photon flux communications regime, including on the upcoming Optical Artemis-2 Orion communications demonstration. The receiver architecture is modular, can be scaled for data rate, and is designed with primarily commercial-off-the-shelf technology. Two fiber interconnect and detector architectures are being prototyped. The first uses a few-mode-fiber coupled to a 16-channel SNSPD array and the second architecture uses a photonic lantern coupled to 7 single-pixel SNSPDs. Photon counting, symbol timing recovery, demodulation and decoding is done using several FPGA cards. This presentation describes the unique features of the ground receiver, performance test results, and challenges with using commercial SNSPDs in free-space optical communications.
Document ID
20240004266
Acquisition Source
Glenn Research Center
Document Type
Presentation
Authors
Jennifer N Downey
(Glenn Research Center Cleveland, Ohio, United States)
Date Acquired
April 10, 2024
Subject Category
Communications and Radar
Meeting Information
Meeting: Advanced Photon Counting Techniques XVIII
Location: National Harbor, MD
Country: US
Start Date: April 23, 2024
End Date: April 24, 2024
Sponsors: International Society for Optics and Photonics
Funding Number(s)
WBS: 405034
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Work of the US Gov. Public Use Permitted.
Technical Review
Single Expert
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