McMaster University

Purpose

Mitigation of atmospheric fluctuations is an absolute necessity for the full benefits of high bandwidth (> 1 Tbs) satellite-based optical communications to be realized. For satellite-based optical communications, the same solution is not sufficient to mitigate the impact of atmospheric fluctuations in the strong scintillation regime, particularly for high bandwidth applications. In particular, and in contrast to astronomy, a high degree of phase recovery is required in order to fully benefit from a large collection area while also enabling optical focusing to a diffraction-limited spot as required for high bandwidth coherent optical processing. In this project, the team will investigate new signal processing approaches towards the development of optical detection systems for jointly estimating the focal plane intensity distribution as well as accomplishing combining or partial phase correction to support the advancement of satellite-based optical commuications.