Air-to-ground lasercom system demonstration design overview and results summary

Abstract

We present an overview of an air-to-ground laser communications demonstration performed at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. Error-free communication at 2.5 Gb/s was demonstrated along a 25-km slant path between a 1-in transmit aperture on an aircraft at 12 kft altitude and ground terminal with 4 separate 1-cm receivers. Power fluctuations from turbulence-induced scintillation are mitigated in the spatial domain by use of the multiple ground receivers and in the time domain by the use of forward error correction and interleaving. The optical terminals are monitored by multiple high-rate sensors which allow us to quantify total system performance.