Open Access
Optical Communications Crosslink Payload Prototype Development for the Cubesat Laser Infrared CrosslinK (CLICK) Mission
Paul Serra,Ondrej Cierny,Rodrigo Diez,Peter Grenfell,Grant Gunnison,Will Kammerer,Joe Kusters,Cadence Payne,Joseph Murphy,Tao Sevigny,Paula do Vale Pereira,Laura Yenchesky,Kerri Cahoy,Myles Clark,Tyler Ritz,Danielle Coogan,John Conklin,David Mayer,John Hanson,Jan Stupl +19 more
- 01 Jan 2019
TL;DR: The Cubesat Laser Infrared CrosslinK (CLICK) mission is a technology demonstration of <1.5U nanosatellite laser communications terminals, with downlinks from low-Earth orbit altitudes of 400-600 km to a portable optical ground station, and crosslinks over ranges from 25-580 km as mentioned in this paper.
read more
Abstract: The Cubesat Laser Infrared CrosslinK (CLICK) mission is a technology demonstration of <1.5U nanosatellite laser communications terminals, with downlinks from low-Earth orbit altitudes of 400-600 km to a portable optical ground station, and crosslinks over ranges from 25-580 km. The mission has two separate launches and three total 3U CubeSats. The first flight, with a single 3U CubeSat, CLICK-A will demonstrate a >10 Mbps downlink. On the second flight, with two identical 3U CubeSats, CLICK-B/C, a >20 Mbps crosslink will be demonstrated in addition to downlinks. In this paper representative link budgets for the crosslink are presented, including both communications and beacon lasers. The payload Pointing, Acquisition and Tracking (PAT) system is introduced, and the performance of the second stage closed loop tracking signal processing is assessed. Errors below 1 μrad are reported from test and simulation. The communication detector of the payload is a 200 μm InGaAs Avalanche PhotoDetector (APD), with a 1 GHz bandwidth and a dynamic range of more than 40 dB provided by programmable gain amplifiers. The APD performance enables a data rate of 17.7 Mbps at a range of 520 km. The timing accuracy of the detector is better than 130 ps.
read more
Chat with Paper
AI Agents for this Paper
Find similar papers on Google Scholar, PubMed and Arxiv
Write a critical review of this paper
Analyze citations of this paper to find unaddressed research gaps
Citations
High-Precision Dual-Stage Pointing Mechanism for Miniature Satellite Laser Communication Terminals
TL;DR: An innovative mechatronic design of a high-accuracy pointing mechanism for orbital laser communication terminals, miniaturized to fit nanosatellite-class spacecraft, aiming to enable optical communication on small-size space platforms.
26
Characterization of laser thermal loading on microelectromechanical systems-based fast steering mirror in vacuum
TL;DR: In this article, the authors show experimental results of optical performance changes due to thermal loading for MEMS two-axis fast steering mirror (FSM) devices from Mirrorcle Technologies, Inc. The deformation changes the focusing characteristics of the mirror, with a peak to valley defocus (second-order Zernike mode) of up to 50nm when the mirrors are tested in ambient and up to approximately 450nm when under vacuum.
22
LaserCube optical communication terminal for nano and micro satellites
Francesco Sansone,Alessandro Francesconi,Roberto Corvaja,Giuseppe Vallone,Riccardo Antonello,Francesco Branz,Paolo Villoresi +6 more
TL;DR: The design and testing of LaserCube, a miniature optical communication terminal conceived for nano and microsatellites, and experimental validation of the system is achieved through a laboratory simulation of an intersatellite link scenario with realistic dynamic disturbance coming from the host satellite attitude jitter.
21
Link analysis for a liquid lens beam steering system, the miniature optical steered antenna for intersatellite communication: MOSAIC
Shreeyam Kacker,Ondrej Cierny,Jared Boyer,Kerri Cahoy +3 more
- 05 Mar 2021
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigate beam quality and divergence using a Zemax model and conduct a link analysis dependent on the beam steering angle and rotation angle, and also consider the impact of diffusers for increasing numerical aperture.
11
A Review of Mechanical Fine-Pointing Actuators for Free-Space Optical Communication
TL;DR: A review of mechanical fine-pointing actuators for free-space optical communication finds that FSMs remain the most popular solution despite limited data on COTS solutions in space. The article describes key criteria for choosing a fine beam steering solution based on available actuation principles and data from past missions.
9
References
Nanosatellite optical downlink experiment: design, simulation, and prototyping
Emily Clements,Raichelle Aniceto,Derek Barnes,David O. Caplan,James R. Clark,Inigo del Portillo,Christian Haughwout,Maxim Khatsenko,Ryan Kingsbury,Myron Lee,Rachel Morgan,J.C. Twichell,Kathleen Riesing,Hyosang Yoon,Caleb Ziegler,Kerri Cahoy +15 more
- 01 Sep 2016
TL;DR: The approach to transition prototype transmitter and receiver designs to a full end-to-end CubeSat-scale system is described, which includes link budget refinement, drive electronics miniaturization, packaging reduction, improvements to pointing and attitude estimation, implementation of modulation, coding, and interleaving, and ground station receiver design.
45
A portable optical ground station for low-earth orbit satellite communications
Kathleen Riesing,Hyosang Yoon,Kerri Cahoy +2 more
- 01 Nov 2017
TL;DR: A ground station architecture that enables deployment in less than one hour and that is capable of tracking satellites in low-Earth orbit and the receiver assembly and fine pointing system that enables arcseconds-level pointing accuracy are presented.
26
On-orbit beam pointing calibration for nanosatellite laser communications
Ondrej Cierny,Kerri Cahoy +1 more
TL;DR: Experimental results show that beacon tracking errors of only 16 μrad root-mean-square are feasible for both axes, significantly exceeding the mission pointing requirement of 0.65 mrad and indicating the feasibility of narrower beams and higher data throughputs for next-generation downlink demonstration missions.
25
•Dissertation
Portable optical ground stations for satellite communication
Kathleen Riesing
- 01 Jan 2018
TL;DR: The Portable Telescope for Lasercom (PorTeLST) as mentioned in this paper is a low-cost optical ground station that uses a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS)-low-cost telescope.
25
Integration and Testing of the Nanosatellite Optical Downlink Experiment
Emily Clements,Kerri Cahoy,Christian Haughwout,Hyosang Yoon,Kathleen Riesing,Maxim Khatsenko,Caleb Ziegler,Raichelle Aniceto +7 more
- 01 Jan 2017
TL;DR: The flight-like opto-mechanical NODE engineering model has successfully passed vibration testing at qualification levels specified by NASA GEVS, and component operational temperatures remained within limits.