Optical space communications

Optical space communications is on the verge of becoming a reality, It will be a key building block for wide-area space data networks of the future. W e will discuss the critical technology and architecture issues to be addres sed for; the realization of these systems, and present examples,of high lev el designs, Design methodologies treating these as complex engineering syst ems, and the technique to breakdown the systems into interacting but logica lly separate subsystems for design and analysis, will be suggested. Fundame ntal limits of performance and avenues for promising future research and de velopment will be given.