An integrated test-bed for PAT testing and verification of inter-satellite lasercom terminals

It is necessary, on the ground in a laboratory, to test the technical parameters and to verify the working performance for the optical pointing, acquisition and tracking (PAT) of an inter-satellite lasercom terminal. In this paper, we report a completed PAT test-bed for this aim. The test-bed works in a fully physical way and is an integration of a 2D optical scanner of two rotating prisms, a 2D fine beam deflector of two tilting optical wedges and a double-focus laser collimator, the overall aperture is about Φ440mm. The optical scanner is designed to scan the beam in the range of 30° with an accuracy of 100μrad and used to simulate the mutual movement between two satellites. The fine beam deflector has the maximum beam deviation of about 1mrad with a step of 0.5μrad and is used to measure the tracking error of a terminal. The collimator has the double focal lengths, respectively, of 1.5m and 10m, the former provides a wide view of field for the use in the acquisition process of the terminal and the latter a narrow view of field for the use in the tracking process. In this paper, the design and fabrication considerations of the PAT test-bed as well as the main specifications of the completed integrated test-bad are given.