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Airborne Optical Communications Demonstrator Design And Preflight Test ResultsA second generation optical communications demonstrator (OCD-2) intended for airborne applications like air-to-ground and air-to-air optical links is under development at JPL. This development provides the capability for unidirectional high data rate (2.5-Gbps) transmission at 1550-nm, with the ability to receive an 810-nm beacon to aid acquisition pointing and tracking. The transmitted beam width is nominally 200-(micro)rad. A 3x3 degree coarse field-of-view (FOV) acquisition sensor with a much smaller ~3-mrad FOV tracking sensor is incorporated. The OCD-2 optical head will be integrated to a high performance gimbal turret assembly capable of providing pointing stability of 5- microradians from an airborne platform. Other parts of OCD-2 include a cable harness, connecting the optical head in the gimbal turret assembly to a rugged electronics box. The electronics box will house: command and control processors, laser transmitter, data-generation-electronics, power conversion/distribution hardware and state-of-health monitors. The entire assembly will be integrated and laboratory tested prior to a planned flight demonstrations.
Document ID
20090019010
Acquisition Source
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Document Type
Conference Paper
External Source(s)
Authors
Biswas, Abhijit
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Page, N.
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Neal, J.
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Zhu, D.
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Wright, M.
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Ovtiz, G.
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Farr, W. H.
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Hernnzati, H.
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Date Acquired
August 24, 2013
Publication Date
January 22, 2005
Subject Category
Aircraft Communications And Navigation
Meeting Information
Meeting: Photonics West, Laser and Application in Engineering
Location: San Jose, CA
Country: United States
Start Date: January 22, 2005
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other
Keywords
optical communications
airborne terminal
Free-space
lasercom,

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