University of Western Australia Terabit-Scale satellite laser comms

[gary]

Originally Posted by John Boyd, IEEE

Researchers at the University of Western Australia’s (UWA) International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research in Perth are building a network of infrared laser base stations—two ground stations and a mobile station, dubbed the TeraNet project—whose 200 THz waves offer the potential of orders of magnitude more data capacity than radio waves. Last month, the team reports they successfully captured the signals sent from a German low Earth orbit satellite, a critical first step in establishing next-generation space communications.

The researchers built TeraNet with off-the-shelf tech wherever possible, says Sascha Schediwy, research group leader in astrophotonics at UWA’s International Centre. “We’re validating that you can build these complex ground stations on a modest budget. You don’t need to be a national space agency like NASA to get into free-space optical communications,” he says.

For example, Schediwy says, the core component of each ground station is a commercially sourced, larger version of an optical telescope anyone might use for stargazing. Once encoded with data, the beam is then transmitted through the telescope set to target a specific satellite as it passes over the ground station—similar to how laser technology is used to transmit data through optical fiber across the internet.

Story here :-
https://spectrum.ieee.org/laser-satellite-communication