Palomar Receive Terminal (PRT) for the Mars Laser Communication Demonstration (MLCD) Project

Abhijit Biswas, Bruce Moision, William T. Roberts, William H. Farr, Andrew Gray, Kevin Quirk, Jon Hamkins, Michael K. Cheng, Jonathan Gin, Michael Nakashima, Gerardo G. Ortiz, Sabino Piazzolla (+2 others)
2007 Proceedings of the IEEE  
| Significant technological advances were made toward utilizing the Hale telescope for receiving the faint laser communication signals transmitted from an optical transceiver on a spacecraft orbiting Mars. The so-called Palomar Receive Terminal design, which would have supported nominal downlink data rates of 1-30 Mbps, is described. Testing to validate technologies for near-Sun (3 from edge of solar disc) daytime operations is also discussed. Finally, a laboratory end-to-end link utilizing a
more » ... -ary pulse-position modulated photoncounting receiver and decoder that achieved predicted nearcapacity (within 1.4 dB) performance is described.
doi:10.1109/jproc.2007.905054 fatcat:simejiwmfjb3jjzt7kugq42zh4