High data rate inter-satellite-communication system SOLACOS

We describe the realization of the Lasercomm on-ground verification system SOLACOS and the current development status. SOLACOS comprises the hardware development of 2 optical terminals and the test infrastructure to test the performance of this system in on-ground experiments. In SOLACOS we implement a coherent 650 MBit/s transmission channel based on coherent Syncbit data transmission technology and on Nd:YAG solid state la sers, a diode-laser based 10 MBit/s ASK transmission system and a fully fun ctional PAT system for an inter-orbit-link application. In parallel to the hardware activities, a computer simulation model of the system is realized. The main goal of SOLACOS is to match the predictions fr om the simulation to the real-world results from the hardware.