Two-element optical array receiver concept demonstration

Theoretical performance and preliminary experimental verification of a two- telescope optical array receiver, currently under development at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as part of a research and technology development effort, is described in this article. A brief summary of optical communications theory for array reception of pulsed laser signals is developed, and the application of coding to optical ar- rays is discussed. Progress towards the development of high-speed photon-counting optical detector arrays, delay compensation and combining algorithms, and signal- processing assemblies required for experimental verification of array performance is described, and preliminary results obtained in a field environment are evaluated to demonstrate gains in communications performance resulting from array detection of pulsed optical signals.