Successful First Satellite Earth Laser High Speed Image Transmission Experiment

Recently, the reporter learned from Changguang Satellite Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Changguang Satellite") that the company used a self-developed vehicle mounted laser communication ground station to conduct satellite ground laser high-speed image transmission experiments with the onboard laser communication terminal of the "Jilin No.1" constellation MF02A04 satellite and achieved success.

This indicates that the company has successfully achieved the engineering of the entire business chain of satellite ground laser high-speed image transmission. This is the first time China has independently completed a high-speed image transmission experiment for commercial application of satellite ground laser.

With the continuous improvement of the spatiotemporal resolution of constellations, the amount of data generated is increasing geometrically. The bandwidth of satellite to ground data transmission links has become a core issue that restricts the transmission of massive satellite data.

Laser communication has become one of the best solutions for ultra high speed transmission of massive data due to its high bandwidth, low latency, and good security, "said Wang Xingxing, technical director of Changguang Satellite Laser Communication Ground Station.

In March 2020, Changguang Satellite synchronously established two research teams based on commercial applications, namely the vehicle mounted laser communication ground station and the satellite mounted laser communication terminal. They adopted the concept of joint design of heaven and earth, and comprehensively carried out research and development work.

Since the beginning of this year, the company has successively completed ground level docking tests and satellite ground bidirectional capture and tracking tests. On October 5th, the company's onboard laser communication ground station received 120GB remote sensing images transmitted by the MF02A04 satellite borne laser terminal, completing the first satellite ground bidirectional laser high-speed image transmission test.

It is reported that this laser communication ground station adopts an onboard configuration, which not only has the characteristics of high bandwidth and miniaturization, but also can be moved and deployed anytime and anywhere. Through the flexible change of the ground station site, it provides effective support for avoiding extreme weather and atmospheric turbulence. This feature will greatly improve the reliability and stability of satellite to ground laser data transmission.

The communication bandwidth of this satellite ground laser image transmission experiment reached 10Gbps (1Gbps is 1 gigabit per second), which is more than 10 times the bandwidth of traditional microwave data transmission. In the future, Changguang Satellite plans to expand this bandwidth to 40-100Gbps and deploy stations in multiple locations throughout the country, which will greatly improve the efficiency of remote sensing image data acquisition for 'Jilin No.1', "said Wang Xingxing.

Source: Science and Technology Daily