ATI's Satellite Laser Communications course

Summary: This course will provide an introduction and overview of laser communication principles and technologies for unguided, free-space beam propagation. Special emphasis is placed on highlighting the differences, as well as similarities to RF communications and other laser systems, and design issues and options relevant to future laser communication terminals. Instructor: Dr. Hamid Hemmati, Ph.D. is with the Jet propulsion laboratory (JPL), California Institute of Technology where he is a Principal member of staff and the Supervisor of the Optical Communications Group. Prior to joining JPL in 1986, he worked at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and at the NIST (Boulder, CO) as a researcher. Dr. Hemmati has published over 40 journal and over 100 conference papers, holds seven patents, received 3 NASA Space Act Board Awards, and 36 NASA certificates of appreciation. He is a Fellow of SPIE and teaches optical communications courses at CSULA and the UCLA Extension. He is the editor and author of two books: “Deep Space Optical Communications” and “near-Earth Laser Communications”. Dr. Hemmati’s current research interests are in developing laser-communications technologies and systems for planetary and satellite communications, including: systems engineering for electro-optical systems, solid-state laser, particularly pulsed fiber lasers, flight qualification of optical and electro-optical systems and components; low-cost multi-meter diameter optical ground receiver telescope; active and adaptive optics; and laser beam acquisition, tracking and pointing. Contact this instructor (please mention course name in the subject line) What You Will Learn: This course will provide you the knowledge and ability to perform basic satellite laser communication analysis, identify tradeoffs, interact meaningfully with colleagues, evaluate systems, and understand the literature. How is a laser-communication system superior to conventional technology? How link performance is analyzed. What are the options for acquisition, tracking and beam pointing? What are the options for laser transmitters, receivers and optical systems. What are the atmospheric effects on the beam and how to counter them. What are the typical characteristics of lasercommunication system hardware? How to calculate mass, power and cost of flight. Who Should Attend: Engineers, scientists, managers, or professionals who desire greater technical depth, or RF communication engineers who need to assess this competing technology. Course Outline: Introduction. . Brief historical background, RF/Optical comparison; basic Block diagrams; and applications overview. Link Analysis. Parameters influencing the link; frequency dependence of noise; link performance comparison to RF; and beam profiles. Laser Transmitter. Laser sources; semiconductor lasers; fiber amplifiers; amplitude modulation; phase modulation; noise figure; nonlinear effects; and coherent transmitters. Modulation & Error Correction Encoding. PPM; OOK and binary codes; and forward error correction. Acquisition, Tracking and Pointing. Requirements; acquisition scenarios; acquisition; point-ahead angles, pointing error budget; host platform vibration environment; inertial stabilization: trackers; passive/active isolation; gimbaled transceiver; and fast steering mirrors. Opto-Mechanical Assembly.Transmit telescope; receive telescope; shared transmit/receive telescope; thermo-Optical- Mechanical stability. Atmospheric Effects. Attenuation, beam wander; turbulence/scintillation; signal fades; beam spread; turbid; and mitigation techniques. Detectors and Detections. Discussion of available photo-detectors noise figure; amplification; background radiation/ filtering; and mitigation techniques. Poisson photon counting; channel capacity; modulation schemes; detection statistics; and SNR / Bit error probability. Advantages / complexities of coherent detection; optical mixing; SNR, heterodyne and homodyne; laser linewidth. Crosslinks and Networking. LEO-GEO & GEO-GEO; orbital clusters; and future/advanced. Flight Qualification. Radiation environment; environmental testing; and test procedure. Eye Safety. Regulations; classifications; wavelength dependence, and CDRH notices. Cost Estimation. Methodology, models; and examples. Terrestrial Optical Communications. Communications systems developed for terrestrial links. Tuition: Tuition for this three-day course is $1590 per person at one of our scheduled public courses. Onsite pricing is available. Please call us at 410-956-8805 or send an email to ati@ATIcourses.com. Register Now Without Obligation