Design of a ground terminal for the STRV-2 satellite-to-ground lasercom experiment

A laser communications terminal built under funding from the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) will be flown as part of the Space Technology Research Vehicle 2 (STRV-2) experiment to be launched as part of Air Force mission TSX-5 in late 1998. The flight hardware, which weighs 31.5 pounds and is capable of communications data rates above 1 Gb/s, was delivered to JPL for integration in July 1997. The planned satellite-to-ground lasercom experiment is designed for slant ranges up to 2000 km and elevation angles above the horizon down to 15 degrees. The ground terminal, described in this paper, is being built now and will be used to measure various link parameters such as burst error rates due to scintillation in addition to demonstrating high speed communications.© (1998) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.