10-Gbps-ready Optical Ground Station for LEO-to-ground link

Authors: Domitille Schanne, Henri Léhec, Aubin Beauland, Pu Jian, Matthieu Meunier, Olivier Pinel, Guillaume Labroille

Cailabs, Rennes, FRANCE

Abstract

Free-space optical communications offer orders of magnitude higher throughput than RF, while being more discrete and not requiring frequency allocation. Project Keraunos, funded by French Defense Innovation Agency, aims at experimenting a Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) to ground optical communication (OGS) link with turbulence mitigation in the OGS to be ready for 10 Gbps or more links. Cailabs is developing the OGS for Keraunos with the mindset of realizing the pilot OGS for an industrial product line of turnkey, robust, high throughput and scalable OGS. This pilot OGS, based on a 80 cm telescope, is designed to operate at high data rate (10 Gbps or more), at low elevation and high turbulence, and has been assembled at Cailabs. This paper presents the characterization of all the subsystems of the OGS, in particular evaluation of pointing, acquisition and tracking, beacons and telecommunication subsystems. This characterization is performed on a horizontal link between the OGS and a remote site located 2.5 km away.