João Miguel Trindade¹, João Paulo N. Torres^2,, António Baptista³, Mª João Martins¹

Satellite communication systems are increasingly more used by the society in many applications, and its development is a high priority for the scientific community. The need for increasing bandwidth to satisfy the users’ needs, makes inter-satellites Free Space Optics (FSO) communication preferred instead of traditional radio frequency links. The inter-satellites communication links with high bit rates and low power is a determining factor in the performance of these systems. As such, communications occur over long distances and high altitude orbits, which requires optical sources with highly collimated and coherent beams in order to ensure a better link between the transmitter and the receiver with low emission power. This paper involves the development of two experimental blocks for implementing an inter-satellite optical communication system using a semiconductor laser type. It aims at the definition and analysis of the elements of the two circuits, at the transmitter subsystem and includes the design for the production of printed circuit boards (PCB). Moreover, experimental tests were performed to validate the results obtained in the simulations.

satellites, optical communications, transmitter subsystem, semiconductor laser