Optical ranging and data transfer development for LISA

Abstract

In order to implement optical inter-spacecraft ranging and data transfer for LISA, the carrier of the laser link must be phase modulated with pseudo-randon noise sidebands. The data acquisition and delay estimation are then implemented in the phasemeter as back end processing. This work presents a proposed demodulation scheme with submeter ranging accuracy and several kilobytes data rate. Its functionality is demonstrated both in a software simulation and in a FPGA-based hardware implementation.