Developing A Highly Accurate Pointing System for Free Space Optical Communications

摘要

Robust and accurate pointing and tracking are primary needs for establishing an optical communication link between mobile platforms because of a small laser beam divergence and the large distances. In order to provide a stable control for this system, a fast feedback loop shall be implemented. In optical communication systems, laser spot misalignment detection is the classical method to adjust the pointing direction. However, development of a real-time visual and rapid decision maker systems for laser terminal exceptionally depends on the hardware and implementation of processing algorithms. These works present a new vision of system architecture for the laser communication terminal. Highly accurate capabilities of the pointing and tracking achieved by combining the image processing technique and its implementation of the ARM-FPGA interaction and low latency control loop which is due to the fast image processing method. The current system architecture can be used for mobile robots communications, inter-satellite optical link establishment and unmanned aerial vehicles due to its low mass and low power consumption together with highly precise pointing capabilities.