A real-time optical ground receiver for photon starved environments

Jennifer N. Downey; Sarah A. Tedder; Brian E. Vyhnalek; Nicholas C. Lantz; Michael A. Marsden; William P. Simon; Thomas P. Bizon; Daniel J. Zeleznikar

doi:10.1117/12.2648325

15 March 2023 A real-time optical ground receiver for photon starved environments

Jennifer N. Downey, Sarah A. Tedder, Brian E. Vyhnalek, Nicholas C. Lantz, Michael A. Marsden, William P. Simon, Thomas P. Bizon, Daniel J. Zeleznikar

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 12413, Free-Space Laser Communications XXXV; 124130P (2023) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2648325
Event: SPIE LASE, 2023, San Francisco, California, United States

Abstract

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Glenn Research Center (GRC) has developed a photon-counting optical ground receiver for pulse-position modulated signals. The real-time receiver system includes a fiber interconnect, superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs), and a real-time field programmable gate array (FPGA) based receiver. The fiber interconnect and SNSPDs are implemented with two different configurations. In the first, a 7-channel few-mode fiber photonic lantern couples the light from the telescope to 7 single-pixel few-mode fiber coupled SNSPDs. In the second configuration, a few-mode fiber couples light to a 16-pixel monolithic SNSPD array. The real-time FPGA-based receiver performs combining of up to 16 SNSPD channels, symbol timing recovery, demodulation, and decoding. The system is scalable with data rates ranging from 20 Mbps to 267 Mbps. It is compliant with the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) Optical Communications Coding and Synchronization Standard. This standard will be used in NASA deep space and other low photon flux missions, such as in the Orion Artemis-2 Optical Communications System (O2O) demonstration, planned for the first crewed flight of Orion. This paper describes the scalable real-time optical receiver system and presents characterization test results.

Conference Presentation

Citation Download Citation

Jennifer N. Downey, Sarah A. Tedder, Brian E. Vyhnalek, Nicholas C. Lantz, Michael A. Marsden, William P. Simon, Thomas P. Bizon, and Daniel J. Zeleznikar "A real-time optical ground receiver for photon starved environments", Proc. SPIE 12413, Free-Space Laser Communications XXXV, 124130P (15 March 2023); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2648325

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