Two-aperture measurements for GEO-feeder adaptive optics pre-compensation optimization.

Area of Science:

• Optical communication
• Atmospheric physics
• Space engineering

Background:

• Ground-to-geostationary orbit (GEO) optical links are crucial for satellite communication.
• Point-ahead anisoplanatism, caused by atmospheric turbulence, degrades telecom performance.
• Current methods struggle in severe atmospheric conditions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present a novel method for estimating pre-compensation phase in ground-to-GEO optical links.
• To mitigate the impact of anisoplanatism on GEO-feeder link performance.
• To improve the coupled flux statistics for satellite communication.

Main Methods:

• Utilizing downlink phase and log-amplitude measurements from two ground apertures.
• Estimating pre-compensation phase to counteract atmospheric effects.
• Comparing performance against a single-aperture estimation method.

Main Results:

• Reduced anisoplanatic phase variance by 50%.
• Demonstrated superior performance over single-aperture methods in severe atmospheric conditions.
• Showed that low-resolution amplitude measurements suffice for the second aperture.

Conclusions:

• The proposed two-aperture method effectively reduces anisoplanatism in ground-to-GEO optical links.
• This technique enhances satellite telecom performance and coupled flux.
• The method is robust, particularly under challenging atmospheric turbulence.