title: Real-time adaptive optics testbed to investigate point-ahead angle in pre-compensation of Earth-to-GEO optical communication.
abstract: We explore adaptive optics (AO) pre-compensation for optical communication between Earth and geostationary (GEO) satellites in a laboratory experiment. Thus, we built a rapid control prototyping breadboard with an adjustable point-ahead angle where downlink and uplink can operate both at 1064 nm and 1550 nm wavelength. With our real-time system, beam wander resulting from artificial turbulence was reduced such that the beam hits the satellite at least 66% of the time as compared to merely 3% without correction. A seven-fold increase of the average Strehl ratio to (28 ± 15)% at 18 μrad point-ahead angle leads to a considerable reduction of the calculated fading probability. These results make AO pre-compensation a viable technique to enhance Earth-to-GEO optical communication.
authors.forename: Nina
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Leonhard
authors.forename: René
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Berlich
authors.forename: Stefano
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Minardi
authors.forename: Alexander
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Barth
authors.forename: Steffen
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Mauch
authors.forename: Jacopo
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Mocci
authors.forename: Matthias
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Goy
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Appelfelder
authors.forename: Erik
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Beckert
authors.forename: Claudia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Reinlein