A high dynamic-range photon-counting receiver for deep space optical communication

Ryan Rogalin; Edwin Grigorian; Daniel Cho; Philip Tsao; Nathaniel Richard; Michael Cheng; Juliana Echternach; Clayton Okino; Andre Tkacenko; Zaid Towfic; Hua Xie; Meera Srinivasan

doi:10.1117/12.2576755

8 March 2021 A high dynamic-range photon-counting receiver for deep space optical communication

Ryan Rogalin, Edwin Grigorian, Daniel Cho, Philip Tsao, Nathaniel Richard, Michael Cheng, Juliana Echternach, Clayton Okino, Andre Tkacenko, Zaid Towfic, Hua Xie, Meera Srinivasan

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 11678, Free-Space Laser Communications XXXIII; 116780J (2021) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2576755
Event: SPIE LASE, 2021, Online Only

Abstract

The Deep Space Optical Communication (DSOC) project will demonstrate free-space optical communication at almost 3 AU, or 3 orders of magnitude further than any previous attempt. DSOC will utilize the 5m Palomar Hale Telescope to receive the downlink signal, which will couple the downlink light onto an optical table and into a superconducting nanowire single photon detector (SNSPD). The output of the SNSPD is digitized by the Ground Laser Receiver Signal Processing Assembly (GSPA) using a high throughput streaming time to digital converter (TDC). The GSPA is a scalable FPGA-based receiver which demodulates and decodes the DSOC downlink signal through novel signal processing algorithms implemented on Xilinx UltraScale+ FPGAs, as well as Python-based software monitor and control routines. Exploiting the unique TDC-based architecture, the GSPA supports over four orders of magnitude of downlink data rates across multiple orders of magnitude of signal and background powers. In this paper we present an overview of the hardware, firmware and software architectures to implement this system, as well as performance analysis for links ranging from near-Earth to 2.8 AU.

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Ryan Rogalin, Edwin Grigorian, Daniel Cho, Philip Tsao, Nathaniel Richard, Michael Cheng, Juliana Echternach, Clayton Okino, Andre Tkacenko, Zaid Towfic, Hua Xie, and Meera Srinivasan "A high dynamic-range photon-counting receiver for deep space optical communication", Proc. SPIE 11678, Free-Space Laser Communications XXXIII, 116780J (8 March 2021); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2576755

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