NDLI: Large aperture “photon bucket” optical receiver performance in high background environments

Content Provider	IEEE Xplore Digital Library
Author	Vilnrotter, V. Hoppe, D.
Copyright Year	2011
Description	Author affiliation: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, 901109, USA (Vilnrotter, V.; Hoppe, D.)
Abstract	The potential development of large aperture ground-based “photon bucket” optical receivers for deep space communications is receiving considerable $attention^{1}.$ However, high quality optical apertures in the 10–30 meter range are costly and difficult to build with accurate surfaces to ensure narrow fields-of-view (FOV). One approach currently under consideration is to polish the aluminum reflector panels of large 34-meter microwave antennas to high reflectance, and accept the relatively large FOV generated by state-of-the-art polished aluminum panels with surface accuracies on the order of a few microns, corresponding to several-hundred micro-radians FOV. Sunlight scattered by the atmosphere becomes significant at micron wavelengths when pointing to within a few degrees of the sun, even with narrow bandwidth optical $filters^{2}.$ Assuming pulse-position modulation (PPM) and Poisson-distributed photon-counting detection, a “polished panel” photon-bucket receiver with large FOV will collect hundreds of background photons per PPM slot, along with comparable signal photons due to its large aperture. Here we demonstrate that communications performance in high-background high-signal environments depends more strongly on signal photons than on background photons, implying that large increases in background energy can be compensated by a relatively small increase in signal energy, which in turn can be accomplished by a modest increase in receiver aperture.
Starting Page	1
Ending Page	9
File Size	997368
Page Count	9
File Format	PDF
ISBN	9781424473502
ISSN	1095323X
e-ISBN	9781424473519
DOI	10.1109/AERO.2011.5747409
Language	English
Publisher	Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
Publisher Date	2011-03-05
Publisher Place	USA
Access Restriction	Subscribed
Rights Holder	Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
Subject Keyword	Photonics Optical filters Optical receivers Detectors Optical reflection Optical diffraction
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Aerospace Engineering Space and Planetary Science

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