The State of the Optical Communications Market

Laser communications terminals provide increased data rates, which means they are able to send and receive more information in a single transmission compared to systems based on radio frequency. Future technologies will target scalability and the establishment of a mesh network of interoperable, multi-domain, multi-orbit laser communications.

Laser communications have come a long way since the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s 1995 technology demonstration, where the agency managed to achieve download speeds of 1 megabit per second. Space companies and agencies are developing the technology to enable safer data transmission and communication with ground stations, aircraft, ships and even between satellites in orbit, with download speeds up to 200 gigabits per second.

Optical communications terminals (OCTs) have significant advantages over radio frequency (RF). Stan Shull, managing director of space advisory company Alliance Velocity points out that OCTs do not require the licensing RF does, meaning the time to market access can be shorter. Shull says OCTs are smaller in size, weigh less, and do not need large solar panels, as they require less power than RF data transmissions, and therefore they are easier and cheaper to launch.

“Just like we moved from dial up internet to fiber, OCTs are inevitable. It's not a question of if it happens, it's just a question of when and how fast,” Shull says.

However, these advantages are offset by disadvantages around hardware and the complexity of network operations. Although OCTs are in demand at the moment, they are not likely to fully replace RF technology: “RF will never die, because it has the advantage to go through the clouds,” says Sven Rettig, head of Sales at Tesat Spacecom, an independent subsidiary of Airbus that is developing laser terminals.

“RF is not going away. [Laser is] not stealing a piece of a pie; we're making the pie bigger. RF has its own advantages that the optical won't have and vice versa,” reaffirms Campbell Marshall, COO of Skyloom Global, another company developing OCTs.

The State of the Market

On the commercial side, more companies, even the ones previously non-receptive to the idea of OCTs, are now considering laser communications for the next generation of their satellites. According to Jordan Vannitsen, CEO and co-founder of Odysseus Space, the shift from RF is partly due to most operators deploying constellations with increased payload capabilities, which mean even more data. “We can see that the biggest markets will be in intersatellite links, driven only by a couple of constellations or mega constellations,” Vannitsen says.

Shull predicts that in the not too distant future a significant percentage of Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites will need to have laser optical communications, co-existing with RF. “I think that optical is likely to be a key enabler for high bandwidth communications,” he says.

Shull explains that the Space Development Agency (SDA), has been driving the standardization of OCTs and has been the anchor customer for multiple commercial companies developing the technology as it builds up the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA) constellation for missile warning and tracking.

The European Space Agency and NASA are also pursuing missions with laser terminals, and commercial constellations like OneWeb are considering adopting OCTs on future versions of constellations. OCTs are expected to play a key role in high bandwidth applications, such as the next generation of Earth Observation (EO) and reconnaissance missions.

Shull also anticipates that there could be tens of thousands of OCTs integrated with satellites in orbit in the coming years: “Right now, you have way more satellites than OCTs. But at some point, if many of the satellites have three or four, you could conceive of a scenario where there are more OCTs on orbit than satellites.”

Laser terminal developer Mynaric has been involved with the SDA and its work to create an interoperability standard for OCTs. CEO Mustafa Veziroglu says one future trend in this area will be developing ways to make OCTs interoperable among different satellite vendors and to work with different intersatellite link standards, instead of spacecraft communicating with a given company’s proprietary terminals only. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Space-BACN (Space-Based Adaptive Communications Node) program is aiming to achieve that with reconfigurable optical datalinks that are able to work with different optical inter-satellite link standards.

Although currently the SDA is setting the standard, commercial companies will probably have alternative standards as well to enable different use cases, explains Skyloom COO Marshall. The current data rate standard set by the SDA is 2.5 gigabits per second, but OCTs are capable of much more and market demand in the future might be well over this as some applications require higher bandwidths.

“We saw a commercial desire to both do what commercial wants but also have the flexibility to link in and cooperate with SDA tranches [so] we built technology that allows us to do both. One of our terminals has a dual mode and can either do what the customer wants it to do, or it can link into the SDA standard and talk to the SDA constellations,” he says.

At the same time, Marshall foresees proliferation: “In the coming years we're going to see who's really able to scale and produce OCTs at scale.”

Dr. Eamon Scullion, associate professor at Northumbria University sees the key trend in faster data rates, smaller terminals, and longer reaching communication channels. “But what very few of them are doing, [is] making them smarter. That is what we're trying to do. We're trying to produce something that's much more flexible and much more adaptable,” he says.

Scullion reiterates that as the technology reaches its limits, OCT systems will have to become smarter in order to be able to support mega constellations with thousands of satellites relaying signals to each other.

“With optical communications, you get higher data rates, with mega constellations, you get massive networks with higher data rates, and you get much more security and much more resilience in your network. So I think that eventually the internet, as we know it, will move to space," Scullion says.

Military and Commercial Needs

Shull sees SpaceX and the SDA as the two leaders in optical communications development.

The SDA is currently putting billions of dollars into its constellation of OCT integrated satellites, building a mesh network of space laser communications. “You have to believe that they think that space optical communications is key and will be successful. And they are specifically creating the standard so that they can almost get plug and play with OCTs,” Shull says. “The other key force is clearly SpaceX. More than half of all satellites in orbit today are SpaceX satellites. They're populating these with OCTs and testing out operational intersatellite links with lasers at scale.”

Veziroglu suggests that SDA standardizing contributes to making the technology much more affordable. Commercial companies cannot afford to get licenses for RF to put it on constellations, says Veziroglu, arguing that RF won’t be as cost-effective compared to the data rates that the laser communication can provide.

As OCT technology is ideal for the defense sector for its low probability of detection, low probability of interception and no spectrum congestion, the U.S. government is looking toward optical communications. In answer to this, Tesat formed Tesat Government earlier this year to serve the U.S. security-restricted market with OCTs.

Justin Luczyk, general manager at Tesat Government praises the SDA for delivering a standard for many different potential providers to build against, but he can already see a lot more demand: for 10 gigabits or even 100 gigabits per second as opposed to the standard 2.5. “To me, that's fun, because at those kind of data rates RF can’t come anywhere close. Lasers are so much faster, that it really fits well with what we're doing on the optics side,” says Luczyk.

“I'm very confident that over time, optical communications will definitely become a backbone for LEO [Low-Earth Orbit] networks and then drive capabilities for other orbits. What I'm seeing in the future is connectivity between those different orbits, because each orbit offers a different value,” Luczyk adds.

Vannitsen states that despite SDA’s efforts, there is no clear standardization yet for optical communications. Different companies and organizations are pushing for different things. “Military and New Space companies don't really have the same needs. Military will be pushing for some specific kind of standards to follow — which if you implement them, it's quite costly. So, it may not necessarily be the right solution for everybody,” Vannitsen says.

Market Dynamic, Funding

Laser communication technology for space is not easy to develop. Rettig of Tesat Spacecom explains that it is not enough to build the space hardware — the difficult part for an optical terminal is building the software. “The pointing, acquisition and tracking algorithm, to find the other terminal and to keep the connection,” Rettig explains. Finding a workforce is also challenging in the sector because automotive players are also looking for electrical engineers, he adds.

Furthermore, Skyloom’s Marshall mentions that the funding environment is brutal. “It's been a very rough 18 months. We've seen companies failing, which is understandable knowing the market dynamics, the gaps between customers, long procurement chains, unique supply chains. It's hard, it's difficult. On the other hand, the market, the demand side is very voracious,” says Marshall.

Scullion says that one of the biggest challenges is that there is no perfect laser on the market and that is something laser diode companies like Laser Components UK are striving to change. The past year has seen more research going into improving detector capability to make laser detectors much more sensitive to very weak optical power levels. This is important, as “the distance achievable with lasers in space is subject to what the lower power threshold for the detectors are,” explains Dr Scullion. The goal is to achieve the ideal laser diode, a 1-watt laser that can operate at 1 gigahertz.

“You can really see that these companies are responding to the direction of travel, which is that this technology is moving to space and those devices need to be able to perform at certain levels as well as needing to be space qualified, so that they can care for this growing market of small satellites where you're going to have tens of thousands of satellites getting launched every five to 10 years,” Scullion adds. VS

Ria Urban is a freelance space journalist based in the UK whose work has appeared across several media outlets. She is the host of the RocketRia YouTube channel and accompanying podcast.