Optical turbulence profiling at the Table Mountain Facility with the Laser Communication Relay Demonstration GEO downlink

Abstract

We report the first measurement of the atmospheric optical turbulence profile using the transmitted beam from a satellite laser communication terminal. A ring image next generation scintillation sensor (RINGSS) instrument for turbulence profiling, as described in Tokovinin [MNRAS 502, 747 (2021)10.1093/mnras/staa4049], was deployed at the NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Table Mountain Facility (TMF) in California. The optical turbulence profile was measured with the downlink optical beam from the Laser Communication Relay Demonstration (LCRD) geostationary satellite. LCRD conducts links with the Optical Communication Telescope Laboratory ground station and the RINGSS instrument was co-located at TMF to conduct measurements. Turbulence profiles were measured at day and night and atmospheric coherence lengths were compared with other turbulence monitors such as a solar scintillometer and Polaris motion monitor. RINGSS sensitivity to boundary layer turbulence, a feature not provided by many profilers, is also shown to agree with a boundary layer scintillometer at TMF (R = 0.85). Diurnal evolution of optical turbulence and measured profiles are presented. The correlation of RINGSS with other turbulence monitors (R = 0.75 − 0.86) demonstrates the concept of free-space optical communications turbulence profiling, which could be adopted as a way to support optical ground stations in a future Geostationary feeder link network. These results also provide further evidence that RINGSS, a relatively new instrument concept, correlates well with other instruments in daytime and nighttime turbulence.