Application and Development of Microwave Photonics Technology in Space TT&C System: Invited Paper

The traditional space telemetry, tracking, command and communication system works in the radio frequency band. With the improvement on measurement accuracy and communication capacity in space missions, the traditional means have a certain bottleneck in dealing with the development of future space missions. The inherent lightweight, high parallel, high capacity and fine processing capabilities of Optics and microwave photonics show the potential to solve the above problems. This paper summarizes the innovative work of the Southwest China Institute of Electronic Technology in the application of laser measurement and communication integration, microwave photonic RF front-end technology in space telemetry, tracking, command and communication system. The experimental platform is established for verification, the accuracy of ranging and velocity measurement reaches millimeter level at 10Gbps single channel transmission rate with 1E-9 bit error rate under a simulation satellite-ground link. The microwave photonic RF front-end can be compatible with S to Ka band, with a sampling rate of 20Gsps and a signal bandwidth of 5GHz. It is expected to be applied to next generation of space telemetry, tracking, command and communication system or navigation and relay system.