An optical receiver for science measurements and data detection

In the era of optical communications, the currently available optical system does not provide the required observations to extract the proper measurements for optical science experiments. Science investigations should utilize the optical telecommunication links between spacecraft and Earth to examine changes in the phase, frequency, amplitude, and polarization of radio signals to investigate planetary atmospheres, planetary rings, planetary surfaces, planetary interiors, solar corona and wind, comet mass flux, and fundamental physics. The proposed system in this paper provides an architectural improvement to the present state of the art optical communication systems utilized by NASA. In this paper we develop an optical receiver to provide amplitude, phase, and Doppler frequency for optical Science measurements in addition to detecting Pulse Position Modulation (PPM) signals. Currently available direct detection PPM does not provide these features. First we propose how to construct an optical receiver with mirrors, splitters, and photon counting detectors that produce in-phase and quadrature components. We analyze the performance of proposed optical system for PPM. The paper provides derivations, and analysis of proposed optical receiver. The innovations are methods to extract phase, Doppler frequency from PPM intensity modulated optical signal. We demonstrate how the receiver can detect the PPM data and at the same time provide phase information for science measurements. Numerical results are provided for the proposed optical receiver.