FRONTIERS PHOTONICS


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OPTICAL COMMUNICATIONS


must be able to manufacture thousands of terminals each year to meet this demand. To overcome this challenge, our engineers design products with manufacturability in mind. Having the right design and being able to automate steps in the manufacturing process allows us to create scalable products. One example is a manual glueing process in one of our subsystems that we used for our previous generation terminals. This process was completely replaced by a non-organic automated process using robots that work in a fraction of the time. Streamlining processes for mass production is key here. There is also the integration


challenge of new technology in the larger ecosystem. For that, it is important that there is a supplier base with compatible products. That is almost as vital as cost-efficiency and scalability to reach a technology breakthrough. Besides the creation of a common standard, which was spearheaded by the Space Development Agency and adopted by the industry, at Mynaric, we made an investment in our own link testbed. This testbed is similar to the on-Earth testing equipment used by the Naval Research Lab and not only emulates a link between two terminals under space conditions, such as range, microvibration and base motion, and doppler, among others, but it also verifies that terminals manufactured by different vendors can talk to each other.


How do you hope optics/ photonics components will improve to meet the laser communication needs of the future? At Mynaric, we are focused on creating scalable, affordable, and industrialised laser communications products. As such, the components we use need to follow those same guiding principles. As we scale up to manufacture thousands of terminals per year, we need to have components that meet the


Mynaric’s Condor Mk2 terminals can be mounted to satellites in high-speed communication networks


growing demand of the market. Photonic integration is,


for sure, something we are profiting from and that will be even more so in the future. That does not just account for the transceiver subsystem where we are already profiting from


“Photonic integration is, for sure, something we are profiting from, and that will be even more so in the future”


highly integrated parts that have been originally developed for the fibre-optics telecom networks.


Functions like all optical switching and routing at Tbps data rates or quantum key distribution would not work without that in a scalable fashion. Basic things like increasing the efficiency of the fibre optical amplifiers is an increasingly important thing,


especially as the data-rates and optical output power needs are growing.


How does Mynaric approach research and innovation? As we develop commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) laser communications products for our current customers, we are amazed by the use cases for laser communications technology that continue to present themselves. We know that research and innovation must be a core area that we always explore. We have a team of engineers


in our research department that constantly challenge the status quo, are identifying new technologies out there and driving innovation by trying out new things that bring more value to our customers, such as increase of throughput, SWaP optimisation, improvement of serial manufacturability, and more. Finding new use cases


and driving innovation is at the heart of what we do every day. We are very proud of the


research projects we have been awarded, such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (Darpa’s) Space- BACN programme and our involvement with the QuNet initiative.


The Space-BACN (Space- based adaptive communications node) programme envisions a low-cost, scalable optical communications terminal that could be reconfigured to work with various optical intersatellite link standards allowing seamless communication among government and private- sector proprietary satellite. The QuNet initiative includes the development of laser communications technology solutions for space, airborne and mobile applications related to quantum communications. l


26 Photonics Frontiers 2023


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