Optical Fiber Communication Between Intra-Satellite Subsystems

Optical fibers are widely used in fiber-optic communications, which permits transmission over longer distances and at higher bandwidths (data rates) than other forms of communications. Fibers are used instead of metal wires because signals travel along them with less loss, and they are also immune to electromagnetic interference. These advantages make it a viable system to be used in various high data rate systems including data communication in intra satellite systems. An optical transceiver converts digital signal to optical data which will be transmitted over the optical fibre and vice versa. To send data as light, it makes use of a light source (LASER or LED) and to receive light pulses, it makes use of a photodiode semiconductor. A PCB consisting of optical transceivers, FPGA, LVDS transmitter, receiver and buffers is designed to establish and characterize optical fiber communication between different subsystems in satellite. The proposed demonstration plan for data transmission and reception using Avionics Full Duplex (AFDX) Ethernet protocol for deterministic communication is discussed in this paper.