Description
The objective of the activity is to characterise narrow attenuation lines (due to absorption or scattering) in the optical C-band (and ideally L-band) and to evaluate their effect on the communication performance of terabit-per-second feeder links. The activity will develop a testbed to perform measurements and to compare them against existing models. Targeted Improvements: 100% reliability improvement of terabit per second optical communication links. Description: Absorption lines may degrade the capacity of high throughput optical communication links through the atmosphere. Highly accurate data bases of narrow band absorption lines are not availablebut are required to (for instance) optimally tune the transmission band of optical amplifiers for feeder-link applications. This activity will therefore develop a measurement setup to characterise the atmospheric transmittance and compare it with available databases (e.g., MODTRAN). The impact of the number, precise wavelength, and attenuation depth of those lines on a high data rate (>100 Gbps) communications system will be evaluated. This will contribute to the design of optical communication systems by identifying useful WDM channels in the optical C-band (and ideally L-band). This activity will: a) Research on available simulated/measured data on optical transmittance, considering all relevant atmospheric molecules. b) Design and develop a setup for measuring the optical transmittance in a ground-to-ground link. c) Analyse the results and compare with data bases. d) Extrapolate the results for ground-to-satellite links e) Set a wavelength plan according to the achievable communications performance to reach aggregated throughput inthe order of terabit-per-second.