Fine Pointing Assembly for Optical Ground Station: Tip-Tilt removal through feedback control

The mini optical ground station (MISO), on top of the Aerospace Engineering faculty, serves the purpose of demonstrating Free Space Optical Communication technology. A downlink from low earth orbit imposes pointing requirements beyond what can be achieved by the telescope mount. A Fine Pointing Assembly (FPA), the topic of this thesis, aims to...

High Throughput Laser Communications to Tundra Orbits

Future Very High-Throughput Satellites are foreseen to implement optical ground-to-satellite feeder links to achieve multi-terabit-per-second data rates. Optical links however, are highly susceptible to atmospheric losses caused by turbulence, absorption, and scattering, especially at low elevation angles. Despite prior confirmation of the...

Deep space Optical Terminal: Design study on a lunar laser communication system

The future will see an increase in missions headed for deep space. Advanced payloads will require higher data rates in more efficient spacecraft. Conventional space communication is facilitated through RF technology. Although it is very reliable, doubts arise on its future sustainability because of limited bandwidth, inefficiency and a saturated...

End-to-End model for free-space-optical Air-to-Space communication services

FSO satellite communication enables data transfer at high bandwidths, low latency, and high security. Due to these benefits, FSO communication services with satellite constellations can hugely improve global connectivity and bandwidth, while maintaining sufficient security. Modeling a global FSO satellite communication service is beneficial for...

Experimental Verification of Beam Wander, Beam Spread and Scintillation in an Optical Laser Link through a Turbulent Atmosphere

Laser satellite communications for ground-to-ground and ground-to space links is influenced by atmospheric turbulence. Typically, theoretical models are used to predict link performance and the influence of the atmosphere on variables such as beam wander, spot size and scintillation at the receiver. These variables are used as input for system...

Optimization techniques for electromagnetic deformable mirrors

The resolution of ground-based telescopes is limited by the blurring caused by Earth’s turbulent atmosphere. Adaptive Optics (AO) is a technique used to correct atmospheric distortions, restoring images to diffraction-limited resolution. The main element of an AO system is the Deformable Mirror (DM), which compensates the distortions of the...

Validating and Improving a Measurement System for a Deformable Mirror

The semiconductor industry is on an ongoing quest to realize smaller feature size, requiring the constant implementation of new technology. A possible new technology is the use of a spatially controlled heat source to actively deform a mirror substrate to compensate for wavefront aberrations. In order to validate the ability to generate...

Proof of concept of a thermal imager with milliKelvin thermal resolution

Contactless Actuation of a Deformable Mirror by means of Radiative Heat Input