FIBERTEK, INC. — National Aeronautics and Space Administration SBIR Phase I: Uplink Laser Beacons for deep-space communication, can benefit greatly from migration to t
FIBERTEK, INC. — SBIR Phase I award from National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
- Amount
- $99,650
- Agency
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- Program / Phase
- SBIR · Phase I
- NAICS
- —
- Place of performance
- VA
- Period
- 2011-02-18 → 2011-09-29
Description
Uplink Laser Beacons for deep-space communication, can benefit greatly from migration to the 1010-1030nm wavelengths, via use of Silicon-APDs on the spacecraft receiving terminal. Fibertek has developed an uplink laser transmitter testbed using a multi-stage fiber-MOPA platform, that is also scalable to a multi-aperture architecture. Preliminary demonstration for 1064nm operation has shown multi-kW peak powers using long-pulse slot(>100nsec)based M-ary PPM format. The highly flexible platform developed at Fibertek, also corrects for pulse-shaping, and pulse-train variations, inherent in such multi-kW long-pulse variable-symbool PPM data-format. This SBIR proposal aims to develop and demonstrate the feasibility of a clear technical road map to translate this to shorter wavelengths<1030nm, as well as to further optimize the uplink laser beacon transmitter for representative M-ary PPM data formats, using FPGA based adaptive control.