An optical wireless system replacing cabled connections for the data transmission in the AIT phase

Nowadays, one of the key issues when designing a Spacecraft (S/C) is to accommodate bundle of wires. The harness in the traditional wired communication poses relevant problems during the Assembly, Integration and Test (AIT) phase. Therefore, the space industry is actively considering wireless solutions for next satellite missions. A solution to these issues can be represented by the Optical Wireless Communication (OWC) systems. They show many advantages over traditional wired communication and wireless RF systems, which include reduction of harness mass, electrical isolation and immunity to Electro-Magnetic Interference (EMI). Recently, the European Space Agency (ESA) funded a project to prove the implementation feasibility of the OWC for intra-S/C, extra-S/C and AIT. The last scenario is expected to be the first to adopt OWC, thanks to the lowest risks associated with the choice of this application scenario. Here we present and demonstrate a new OWC system design for typical AIT scenarios. The system implements a bidirectional communication between S/C devices to the Electrical Ground Support Equipment (EGSE), able to replace the MIL-STD-1553B connection cables. This is achieved by means of optical transceivers realized exploiting only low-cost and Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) components. Here, the characterizations of the Transceiver (TRX) results are reported, the measured receiver sensitivity is compatible with expected received optical power in the AIT scenario. Therefore, the systems performance was tested transmitting a MIL-STD-1553B signal. We also measured the received optical power and calculated the link margin.