Design of a Two Wavelength Optical Downlink for LEO Spacecrafts

Abstract

Optical fiber brought high data transmission for terrestrial communication systems, consequently the community had the ambition of establishing similar data rates for free-space optical links. This work presents a system architecture and a design method for optical downlink for spacecrafts in Low-Earth orbit - LEO - and aims to achieve easy integration as well as simplicity for assembly. A statistical model for laser propagation in atmosphere is employed in order to obtain a theoretical model for description of the system.