Abstract
The first bi-directional laser communication demonstration between an optical ground station and the Optical Inter-orbit Communication Engineering Test Satellite (OICETS, Japanese name “Kirari”) was successfully conducted in March and May 2006 with an uplink of 2 Mbps and a downlink of 50 Mbps. The optical communication quality was improved in September 2006. The optical ground station, located in Koganei, Tokyo, Japan, is operated by the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), Japan. The Kirari Optical Communication Demonstration Experiments with the NICT optical ground station was called “KODEN”. Four laser beams were transmitted from the optical ground station to the OICETS satellite in order to reduce the optical signal's intensity fluctuation due to atmospheric turbulence. The optical scintillation as a function of the number of beams and the frequency response were measured, and the uplink and downlink laser transmission results were obtained.
