Optical CDMA for CubeSats, Year 1

Status: Completed

Start Date: 2016-10-01

End Date: 2017-07-01

Description: Develop an end to end optical CubeSat system architecture. Define all signal processing components required for successful operation suitable for hardware implementation and testing in the future. Perform software simulations to validate the analysis.
Benefits: The designed system has advantages over other types of multiple access systems - Time-Division Multiple Access (TDMA), Wavelength-Division Multiple Access (WDMA), Space-Division Multiple Access (SDMA). All transmit lasers and optical receivers on the CubeSats could have identical implementation except for the signature codes that separate them. Optical CDMA communications between a constellation of CubeSats and an Earth station does not need bandwidth allocations and the number of CubeSats can be increased with graceful degradation in performance.

Lead Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory