Latest Developments in the Field of Optical Communications for Small Satellites and Beyond

In this article, we introduce our vision for the future non-terrestrial networks beyond 5G and discuss the possible implementation scenarios for free-space optical communication technology in it, especially regarding the satellite communications segment. We show and discuss some of the latest system developments globally in the field of optical communications for small satellites. Together with the latest projects in the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) of Japan for payloads for small moving platforms, a specific trend in the field is clearly defined. We further show our newly developed ground station for the experiments with our High-speed Communication with Advanced Laser Instrument (HICALI) payload and discuss the main challenges in a satellite to ground optical link and our specific solution providing preliminary test results of the performance.