One example is military transformational communications in which the proposed technology would be an enabler for a satellite laser communications backbone. This technology would also be directly applicable to commercial free space optical communications targeted at the last mile in residential and business broadband communications. In addition, LIDAR remote sensing could benefit from the proposed heterodyne detection scheme.
In addition to the transformational communications application to which this proposal is responding, a space-qualifiable heterodyne optical mixer would have applications in many of NASA's remote sensing applications. A successful Phase II follow-on will result in a laser communication subsystem, which could be transitioned into a commercial product. This would be significant for the research community where to date there are no compact and inexpensive off-the-shelf heterodyne free space optical communication detection systems, let alone one that is insensitive to path length differences and platform orientation.
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