Use of photonic communications technology on military aerospace vehicles offers significant advantages in weight, volume, reduced cost and improved reliability for these vehicles. Weight and volume savings come from replacement of copper wire and electronic termination hardware in cable assemblies having large wire counts with optical fiber cables having small fiber counts. Cost savings are associated with the weight and volume savings and with integration of control, power and communication systems. Reliability is enhanced through Electromagnetic Interference susceptibility reduction, multipath redundant communication lines and communication system simplifications which are part of an integrated vehicle management system design. Specific technology which will be required in a fully optimized photonic aerospace vehicle communication system and which is not currently available for the aerospace environment includes 1) multimode optical fiber Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) tap for wavelength selective drop and insert of optical signals along a multimode optical fiber bus, 2) wavelength selected Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Lasers (VCSELs) and 3) optimized actuator motor phase sensor interface to a photonic network. Optelecom proposes to develop multimode optical fiber WDM tap hardware and to investigate application of existing communications technology to the aerospace environment for wavelength selected VCSELs and actuator motor phase sensor interface.
Benefits: Photonic communication systems developed for aerospace vehicles will be applicable to other military and commercial aircraft. In addition, multimode WDM bus add/drop taps and wavelength selected VCSELs are part of a low cost solution for fiber-to-the home commercial communication systems.
