Wavefront measurements at ESA's Optical Ground Station and simulation of heterodyne receiver performance

Dirk Giggenbach

doi:10.1117/12.384320

2 May 2000 Wavefront measurements at ESA's Optical Ground Station and simulation of heterodyne receiver performance

Dirk Giggenbach

Proceedings Volume 3932, Free-Space Laser Communication Technologies XII; (2000) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.384320
Event: Symposium on High-Power Lasers and Applications, 2000, San Jose, CA, United States

Abstract

Future applications for the Optical Ground Station (OGS) on Tenerife, Spain, are currently being investigated, e.g. the use as a ground terminal in deep space missions. The impact of atmospheric effects on the sensitivity and reliability of an optical link depends heavily on the wavelength and the kind of transmission, mainly if direct or coherent detection is employed. To simulate and evaluate the link quality in the case of coherent reception (heterodyne or homodyne), measurements of the wavefront and intensity distributions have been carried out at the OGS telescope with a Shack- Hartmann sensor, using bright stars as reference sources. A representative set of normalized measurement samples has been generated and evaluated in respect of basic parameters like scintillations, tip-tilt, and wavefront error. The complex speckle patterns at the focal plane have been compared and a superposition with a local oscillator has been simulated. The outcome of these simulations (i.e. heterodyning efficiency) depending on several parameters is presented and compared with environmental conditions.

Citation Download Citation

Dirk Giggenbach "Wavefront measurements at ESA's Optical Ground Station and simulation of heterodyne receiver performance", Proc. SPIE 3932, Free-Space Laser Communication Technologies XII, (2 May 2000); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.384320

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