Trends in Laser Communications in Space Report on International Workshop “ GOLCE 2010 ”

In space, radio frequencies (RFs) are usually used for long-distance linkage. However, recent progress in optics and laser technologies, especially in fiber optics, is ushering in an era of inter-orbit communications using laser beams. Both RFs and optical waves are electromagnetic waves, but optical waves offer many advantages in space, including reduced mass, power, and volume of equipment, higher data rates, no tariffs and no regulatory restrictions such as with RF bands. The benefits are due to optical waves’ high frequency. In Europe, the European Space Agency (ESA) in its Semiconductor Laser Intersatellite Link Experiment (SILEX) has routinely used a 50Mbps optical communication link twice a day between a low earth orbit (LEO) and geostationary earth orbit (GEO) satellite since 2003. In Japan, the Optical Inter-orbit Communications Engineering Test Satellite (OICETS) developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) was launched in August 2005 and a laser communication link with the SILEX terminal was successfully established. After these experiments, ground-to-OICETS laser communications experiments including four optical ground stations (OGSs) were conducted and laser beam propagation data were acquired. The National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) organized an international workshop called Ground-to-OICETS Laser Communications Experiments 2010 (GOLCE2010) in Tenerife, Spain, through which recent trends in the research and development of laser communications in space were reported.