Sep 22, 2026 · 14 min · 11 segments
Unlike traditional radio frequency communication, optical communication uses narrow and highly focused beams of light that enable up to 100 times higher data transmission rates and make links harder…
Alex PaltHost
When you think about that whole aspect, I imagine weather may have a factor over long distances, but it all depends on because if you're in vacuum, that doesn't matter.
But I guess the portion of the ground link that's within the atmosphere may be an issue.
What are the real challenges in deploying laser communications with your satellite systems?
you're correct that's the main challenge getting through the atmosphere and that's why uh these laser links are now i would say proliferated in some constellations like the starling constellation or some other constellations as well that use these in space because in space you don't have the atmosphere it's very deterministic the environment is such that you always know where your satellite is within a few kilometers of uncertainty and then you can just start establishing those links you start hitting that counterpart satellite some 5000 kilometers away with your laser and then it communicates back it's very easy the the link is the same as in fiber there is no additional difficulty associated with it besides the point now if you go space to ground it's a different matter entirely because first you have the atmosphere itself which is in a way a lens It's a very weak lens, but over long distances, it will distort your beam, and it will distort it randomly.
And this has to be compensated for in terms of transmit power, in terms of how you deal with it.
There are many ways, like adaptive optics, some more clever ways in solid state to deal with it, but it's a big problem.
And we actually, at AstroLight, started solving this problem, and we have now three satellites in orbit that are geared for space-to-ground communication.
But we are seeing that Actually, in space is where this technology is being adopted faster because you don't have these problems.
And in principle, the hardware is the same, but you have to have different algorithms.
You have to correct for hours differently because for space-to-space links, the dropouts are noise-like.
For atmospheric links, you can get 10 milliseconds of dropout, and 10 milliseconds at 100 gigabits per second is going to be an appreciable amount of data that you need to recover.
When you think about that whole aspect, I imagine weather may have a factor over long distances, but it all depends on because if you're in vacuum, that doesn't matter.
But I guess the portion of the ground link that's within the atmosphere may be an issue.
What are the real challenges in deploying laser communications with your satellite systems?
you're correct that's the main challenge getting through the atmosphere and that's why uh these laser links are now i would say proliferated in some constellations like the starling constellation or some other constellations as well that use these in space because in space you don't have the atmosphere it's very deterministic the environment is such that you always know where your satellite is within a few kilometers of uncertainty and then you can just start establishing those links you start hitting that counterpart satellite some 5000 kilometers away with your laser and then it communicates back it's very easy the the link is the same as in fiber there is no additional difficulty associated with it besides the point now if you go space to ground it's a different matter entirely because first you have the atmosphere itself which is in a way a lens It's a very weak lens, but over long distances, it will distort your beam, and it will distort it randomly.
And this has to be compensated for in terms of transmit power, in terms of how you deal with it.
There are many ways, like adaptive optics, some more clever ways in solid state to deal with it, but it's a big problem.
And we actually, at AstroLight, started solving this problem, and we have now three satellites in orbit that are geared for space-to-ground communication.
But we are seeing that Actually, in space is where this technology is being adopted faster because you don't have these problems.
And in principle, the hardware is the same, but you have to have different algorithms.
You have to correct for hours differently because for space-to-space links, the dropouts are noise-like.
For atmospheric links, you can get 10 milliseconds of dropout, and 10 milliseconds at 100 gigabits per second is going to be an appreciable amount of data that you need to recover.
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