Chinese researchers have successfully increased satellite internet rates to 1 Gbps, which is five times faster than SpaceX’s Starlink internet, which is owned by Elon Musk. From a satellite in a stationary orbit more than 60 times higher than Starlink competitors, a 2-watt laser was used to accomplish this.
Although satellite laser downlinks provide fast internet, air turbulence makes it difficult to transmit data. Upon reaching the ground, the laser beams are scattered by this natural interference, becoming dim, hazy patches that may stretch for several hundred meters.
A Chinese research team headed by Liu Chao of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Professor Wu Jian of the Peking University of Posts and Telecommunications presented AO-MDR synergy as a solution to this issue.
The objective of this technique is to make up for the signal interference triggered by turbulence.
In a peer-reviewed study that was published on June 3 in the Chinese-language journal Acta Optica Sinica, the researchers stated that:
“This method effectively prevents communication quality degradation caused by extremely low signal power.”
Researchers tested their technology at an observatory in Lijiang, southwest China, with a 1.8-meter (5.9-foot) telescope pointed at an unidentified satellite that was 36,705 kilometers above Earth.
By reshaping distorted laser light with 357 micro-mirrors inside the telescope, wavefront distortion from the atmosphere was significantly reduced.
A multi-plane light converter (MPLC) was utilized to split the incoming light, which passes through a multi-mode fiber, into eight base-mode channels in order to further improve the signal.
A specially designed algorithm called “path-picking,” which was fueled by specialized processors, was used to select and merge the three strongest signals from these in real time.
With the help of this method, the scientists noted an identifiable increase in the strength of signal, making the Chinese satellite faster than starlite.
The whole AO+MDR method delivered an enormous improvement in performance over adaptive optics (AO) by itself, especially in those critical levels where signal dependability is most difficult to maintain.
In addition, when it comes to high-value data transfer, this technique not only improves throughput, but it also lowers the numbers of mistakes, hence improving the likelihood of usable signals from 72% to 91.1%.
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