SOUT optical intersatellite communication terminal elegant breadboard

Author

Baister, G.C. ; Gaten, P.V. ; Lewis, J.

Author_Institution

Matra Marconi Space (UK), Stevenage, UK

Volume

142

Issue

6

fYear

1995

fDate

12/1/1995 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

279

Lastpage

287

Abstract

The small optical user terminal (SOUT) is an optical communications transceiver for interconnecting a low earth orbiting satellite to future optical data relay terminals and is the subject of an ESA development programme led by MMS (UK), A complete breadboard terminal model has been constructed and tested to provide confidence in the feasibility of the flight design. The paper reports on the design of this elegant breadboard including the overall configuration, optical bench, and the pointing, acquisition and tracking (PAT) subsystem. The approach to the performance verification is discussed and the counter-terminal test equipment is described. The optical and PAT performances are presented which show that the terminal is compliant with the predicted performance

Keywords

data acquisition; optical communication; optical tracking; satellite links; transceivers; ESA development programme; SOUT optical intersatellite communication terminal; acquisition; complete breadboard terminal model; counter-terminal test equipment; flight design; future optical data relay terminals; low earth orbiting satellite; optical bench; optical communications transceiver; pointing; small optical user terminal;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Optoelectronics, IEE Proceedings -

Publisher

iet

ISSN

1350-2433

Type

jour

DOI

10.1049/ip-opt:19952267

Filename

487660