Development and demonstration of an airborne laser communication system

Free-space optical communication (FSOC) offers numerous advantages such as high-speed and secure connectivity that will complement and challenge traditional radio-frequency (RF) communication. It comes with specific challenges such as very precise pointing in the presence of atmospheric turbulence and platform vibrations. Within the UltraAir project these are driven to the extreme with the ambition to develop a demonstrator of an airborne laser communication system compatible with the SpaceDataHighway (EDRS). While the system will be integrated into an aircraft typically travelling at 800km/h at an altitude of 10km, the counter terminal is Alphasat’s TDP-1 in geostationary orbit, resulting in link distances of up to 40000km. This paper will report on a number of design challenges as well as on the first demonstration results of the ground to space optical link testing at 2.8Gbps from the ESA Optical Ground Station (ESA OGS) on Tenerife.