Light: Science & Applications (Jun 2023)

Tbit/s line-rate satellite feeder links enabled by coherent modulation and full-adaptive optics

  • Yannik Horst,
  • Bertold Ian Bitachon,
  • Laurenz Kulmer,
  • Jannik Brun,
  • Tobias Blatter,
  • Jean-Marc Conan,
  • Aurélie Montmerle-Bonnefois,
  • Joseph Montri,
  • Béatrice Sorrente,
  • Caroline B. Lim,
  • Nicolas Védrenne,
  • Daniel Matter,
  • Loann Pommarel,
  • Benedikt Baeuerle,
  • Juerg Leuthold

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41377-023-01201-7
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12, no. 1
pp. 1 – 12

Abstract

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Abstract Free-space optical (FSO) communication technologies constitute a solution to cope with the bandwidth demand of future satellite-ground networks. They may overcome the RF bottleneck and attain data rates in the order of Tbit/s with only a handful of ground stations. Here, we demonstrate single-carrier Tbit/s line-rate transmission over a free-space channel of 53.42 km between the Jungfraujoch mountain top (3700 m) in the Swiss Alps and the Zimmerwald Observatory (895 m) near the city of Bern, achieving net-rates of up to 0.94 Tbit/s. With this scenario a satellite-ground feeder link is mimicked under turbulent conditions. Despite adverse conditions high throughput was achieved by employing a full adaptive optics system to correct the distorted wavefront of the channel and by using polarization-multiplexed high-order complex modulation formats. It was found that adaptive optics does not distort the reception of coherent modulation formats. Also, we introduce constellation modulation – a new four-dimensional BPSK (4D-BPSK) modulation format as a technique to transmit high data rates under lowest SNR. This way we show 53 km FSO transmission of 13.3 Gbit/s and 210 Gbit/s with as little as 4.3 and 7.8 photons per bit, respectively, at a bit-error ratio of 1 ∙ 10−3. The experiments show that advanced coherent modulation coding in combination with full adaptive optical filtering are proper means to make next-generation Tbit/s satellite communications practical.