Optical TDM technology for N+1 redundant systems in high resolution optical earth observation satellites

Abstract

Optical remote sensing has been greatly expanded by the construction of satellite constellations and improving the performance of the optical sensors. As the data throughput of earth observation satellites increases, photonic technology is expected to be used for the interconnections within the payload in order to reduce its overall size, mass, and power consumption, and to improve its immunity to EMI. Here, we propose an optical time division multiplexing technology for N+1 redundancy in the payload, which is able to improve reliability by reducing the number of active components in the satellites, and present a feasibility study on its transmission efficiency.