Abstract
In inter-satellite link with a lot of low-earth-orbit (LEO) satellites, each satellite will communicate with one or more satellites. In such cases a satellite needs to have multiple optical antennas which are required small and light. A communication link between satellites is cut at high latitudes because an antenna drive angle is large due to high relative angular rate. In order to reduce this link-lost time, a wide drive range with high speed is required for an optical antenna. To meet these requirements, we propose an optical antenna of a coude-path type. This paper describes the mechanism and the experimental results of the optical antenna we have developed.
