EFAL: EDRS Feeder Link from Antarctic Latitudes - Preliminary Results of Site Investigations, Availability, and System Requirements

Kurzfassung

Laser communications from ground to geostationary satellites can enable high-rate data repatriation from remote ground station sites. When employing Arctic or Antarctic ground hubs, the low link elevations impose a major challenge due to the strong atmospheric index-of-refraction turbulence impact and increased attenuation. The usability of the European Data Relays System (EDRS) for data uplinks from an Antarctic ground station has been analyzed in terms of cloud-availability and feasibility in terms of atmospheric turbulence. For model-verification, an on-site wavefront measurement campaign has been carried out. This scenario also serves as worst test-case for future optical GEO-feeder links.