Description
Objective: This activity aims at developing a modular software tool allowing to simulate the improvement from employing adaptive optics (AO) systems in bidirectional optical ground station (OGS) to satellites optical communication and quantum links scenarios (e.g. GEO, LEO, MEO). Targeted Improvements: 50% improvement of design time and computation time to dimension optical communication systems operating through atmospheric turbulence enhanced by adaptive optics.Description: The software is intended to simulate i) beam propagation through the atmosphere (and free space) in scenarios of bidirectional optical links between an Optical Ground Station (OGS) and GEO or LEO satellites; and ii) a full adaptive optics loop aiming at compensating the atmospheric impairment undergone by the communication beam. In the case of the uplink, the adaptive optics (AO) acts as a pre-compensation at the transmitter, whereas in the downlink as a post-compensation at the receiver. The software is intended to be modular in the sense each block (module) of the end-to-end-chain should allow to easily configure the parameters of the communication link (e.g. aperture diameters, beam shape, spatial diversity, atmospheric turbulence profile, atmospheric turbulence strength etc.) as well as the adaptive optics parameters(e.g., type of wave front sensor, laser guide star, deformable mirrors, controller, number of corrected modes etc.). Several ways of simulating the systems (e.g., analytical models, physical propagation, numerical simulations) shall be used to cross-validate the obtained results. As output, the software tool should provide relevant parameters (e.g., wavefront distortion, mean received intensity, intensity variance etc.) to assess the impact of atmospheric turbulence on the signal with and without AO, in order to support the design of optical communications systems. The tool shall also allow in a practical way to account of AO in link dimensioning for communication purposes and shall output the expected improvement on the link budget.Procurement Policy: C(1) = Activity restricted to non-prime contractors (incl. SMEs). For additional information please go to:http://www.esa.int/About_Us/Business_with_ESA/Small_and_Medium_Sized_En…