Uplink Pre-Compensation for Ground-to-Space Optical Communications Using Downlink Tomographic Reconstruction

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Frost, Alex, Maron, Nicolas, Walsh, Shane, Dix-Matthews, Benjamin, Schediwy, Sascha, Hart, Michael
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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_version_ 1866916945886969856
author Frost, Alex
Maron, Nicolas
Walsh, Shane
Dix-Matthews, Benjamin
Schediwy, Sascha
Hart, Michael
author_facet Frost, Alex
Maron, Nicolas
Walsh, Shane
Dix-Matthews, Benjamin
Schediwy, Sascha
Hart, Michael
contents Uplink pre-compensation in ground-to-satellite optical links remains a problem, with an appropriate measurement of the wavefront error in the uplink path often not being available. We present a method that uses successive measurements of the readily accessible downlink beam to perform a tomographic reconstruction of the volume of atmosphere common to the downlink beam and the ground-station field-of-view. These measurements are done through the existing downlink wavefront sensor. From here, an estimate of the wavefront error along the uplink path can be obtained. We evaluate this method in simulation over representative atmospheric conditions and find good performance, especially for situations where the satellite point-ahead angle is many times greater than the atmosphere's isoplanatic angle. Compared to pre-compensation directly using the downlink phase, we find that this method estimates the uplink path with a residual mean-square wavefront error that is up to 8.6 times less. The hardware simplicity of this method makes it a promising solution for uplink pre-compensation implementations targeted at optical communications.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_08866
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Uplink Pre-Compensation for Ground-to-Space Optical Communications Using Downlink Tomographic Reconstruction
Frost, Alex
Maron, Nicolas
Walsh, Shane
Dix-Matthews, Benjamin
Schediwy, Sascha
Hart, Michael
Instrumentation and Detectors
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Uplink pre-compensation in ground-to-satellite optical links remains a problem, with an appropriate measurement of the wavefront error in the uplink path often not being available. We present a method that uses successive measurements of the readily accessible downlink beam to perform a tomographic reconstruction of the volume of atmosphere common to the downlink beam and the ground-station field-of-view. These measurements are done through the existing downlink wavefront sensor. From here, an estimate of the wavefront error along the uplink path can be obtained. We evaluate this method in simulation over representative atmospheric conditions and find good performance, especially for situations where the satellite point-ahead angle is many times greater than the atmosphere's isoplanatic angle. Compared to pre-compensation directly using the downlink phase, we find that this method estimates the uplink path with a residual mean-square wavefront error that is up to 8.6 times less. The hardware simplicity of this method makes it a promising solution for uplink pre-compensation implementations targeted at optical communications.
title Uplink Pre-Compensation for Ground-to-Space Optical Communications Using Downlink Tomographic Reconstruction
topic Instrumentation and Detectors
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.08866