Using satellite vibrations to improve performance of free space satellite laser communication

In some of the future laser communication satellites, it is plausible to assume that tracking and communication receivers will be using the same array of detector. The reason for such detector dual use is to design simpler and cheaper satellites. Satellites vibrate continually due to operation of their subsystems and environmental sources. The vibrations cause non-uniform spreading of the received energy on the detector array. In view of this, we use the information from the tracking system in order to adapt individually the communication signal gain of each of the detectors in the array. This adaptation of the gains improves communication system performance. It is important to emphasize that the communication performance improvement is achieved by only gain adaptation. Any additional vibrations decrease the tracking and laser pointing system performances, which decrease the return communication performances (two-way communication). A comparison of practical communication systems is presented. The novelty of this research is the utilization of natural satellite vibrations to improve the communication system performance.