This proposed work will make space science and exploration more effective, affordable, and sustainable in that it will enable low cost and low SWaP technologies for space communications, freeing up resources for other onboard systems. The PIC technology will also better utilize the high bandwidth afforded by optics and scale readily to higher data rates. This technology will allow more frequent and lower cost missions and allow for incorporating free space laser modems on smaller satellites (ex. cubesats) and small craft (ex. drones).
The FSO transmitter technology is also applicable to a range of commercial FSO link applications, both space based and terrestrial. 1550nm is eye safe, which will allow up to two orders of magnitudes higher emitted power while maintaining eye safety for terrestrial communications links. For this reason, the developed transmitter technology will be ideally suited for implementation in long-range FSO link applications.
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