Two-Element Optical Array Receiver Concept Demonstration

Theoretical performance and preliminary experimental verification of a twotelescope optical array receiver, currently under development at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as part of a research and technology development effort, is described in this article. A brief summary of optical communications theory for array reception of pulsed laser signals is developed, and the application of coding to optical arrays is discussed. Progress towards the development of high-speed photon-counting optical detector arrays, delay compensation and combining algorithms, and signalprocessing assemblies required for experimental verification of array performance is described, and preliminary results obtained in a field environment are evaluated to demonstrate gains in communications performance resulting from array detection of pulsed optical signals.