Optical Design of an Optical Communications Terminal

An optical communications terminal (OCT) is being developed to enable transmission of data at a rate as high as 2.5 Gb/s, from an aircraft or spacecraft to a ground station. In addition to transmitting high data rates, OCT will also be capable of bidirectional communications. The OCT is meant to incorporate all of the design features of a prior apparatus denoted the Optical Communications Demonstrator (OCD), plus some improvements.