System for bidirectional free-space laser communication of gigabit Ethernet telemetry data

摘要

A free-space laser communication system for bidirectional transmission of telemetry data in Gigabit Ethernet (GBE) protocol using a dual atmospheric effect mitigation approach. This free-space bidirectional GBE laser communication system utilizes an Optical Combining Receiver Array and a Framer/Forward Error Correction/Interleaver (FFI) device to mitigate the combined effects of atmospheric turbulence and channel fading. Since the FFI device is designed for Synchronous Optical Network (SONET) protocol, an intelligent (or smart) media converter is used to convert GBE telemetry data to SONET frames, which enables the FFI device to perform an error correction algorithm and provide a seamless error-free GBE laser communication link for distance over a kilometer. This bidirectional laser communication system can be implemented with low-cost commercially available components.

主权项

1. A system comprising:
an array of lenses; an optical communications receiver array that is optically coupled to said array of lenses and configured to convert light impinging on said array of lenses into differential electrical signals; a regenerator configured to convert the differential electrical signals into regenerated optical signals formatted in accordance with a specified networking protocol; an error correction subsystem configured to convert the regenerated optical signals from said regenerator into electrical signals representing a data bit stream, perform forward error correction on the electrical signals representing a data bit stream to produce electrical signals representing a corrected data bit stream, and converting the electrical signals representing the corrected data bit stream into optical signals formatted in accordance with the specified networking protocol to represent the corrected data bit stream; a media converter configured to convert optical signals transmitted by the error correction subsystem into electrical signals in GBE format representing the corrected data bit stream; and a data processor programmed to process electrical signals in GBE format received from said media converter.