Fiberbundle Receiver: A new Concept for High-Speed and High-Sensitivity Tracking in Optical Transceivers

Abstract

The design of optical transceivers for mobile free space optical communication systems is a sophisticated task. A typical transceiver design includes the combination of coarse- and fine-tracking-sensors, a data receiver, and a laser source for sending data. For heavily vibrating environments or for systems that have stringent requirements in terms of pointing accuracy, a fast steering mirror might be used. This results in a design with many parts. The Fiberbundle Receiver, consisting of 7 fibers in conjunction with photodiodes, can ease such an implementation process. It allows the combination of some of the mentioned components, which results in a less complicated design. Standard COTS components for fiber based WDM systems can be used for challenging tasks as e.g. wavelength splitting. Furthermore, a cost-effective and very fast tracking system can be implemented. A technology demonstrator for the application of the Fiberbundle Receiver at a wavelength of 1550 nm has been developed and will be discussed in this paper.