Performance of the optical communication adaptive optics testbed

Jennifer Roberts; Mitchell Troy; Malcolm Wright; Stephen Guiwits; Siddarayappa Bikkannavar; Gary Brack; Vachik Garkanian; Dean Palmer; Benjamin Platt; Tuan Truong; Kent Wallace; Keith Wilson

doi:10.1117/12.618072

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12 September 2005 Performance of the optical communication adaptive optics testbed

Jennifer Roberts, Mitchell Troy, Malcolm Wright, Stephen Guiwits, Siddarayappa Bikkannavar, Gary Brack, Vachik Garkanian, Dean Palmer, Benjamin Platt, Tuan Truong, Kent Wallace, Keith Wilson

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Proceedings Volume 5892, Free-Space Laser Communications V; 589212 (2005) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.618072
Event: Optics and Photonics 2005, 2005, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

We describe the current performance of an adaptive optics testbed for free space optical communication. This adaptive optics system allows for simulation of night and day-time observing on a 1 meter telescope with a 97 actuator deformable mirror. In lab-generated seeing of 2.1 arcseconds (at 0.5μm) the system achieves a Strehl of 21% at 1.064μm (210nm RMS wavefront). Predictions of the system's performance based on real-time wavefront sensor telemetry data and analytical equations are shown to agree with the observed image performance. We present experimentally measured gains in communications performance of 2-4dB in the received signal power when AO correction is applied in the presence of high background and turbulence at an uncoded bit error rate of 0.1. The data source was a 100Mbps on-offkeyed signal detected with an IR-enhanced avalanche photodiode detector as the receiver.

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Jennifer Roberts, Mitchell Troy, Malcolm Wright, Stephen Guiwits, Siddarayappa Bikkannavar, Gary Brack, Vachik Garkanian, Dean Palmer, Benjamin Platt, Tuan Truong, Kent Wallace, and Keith Wilson "Performance of the optical communication adaptive optics testbed", Proc. SPIE 5892, Free-Space Laser Communications V, 589212 (12 September 2005); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.618072

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