Beacon system for ESA IZN-1 Optical Ground Station

Abstract

This paper describes a beacon system for satellite optical communications developed for IZN-1 (Izaña One) - the new robotic optical ground station of the European Space Agency deployed in Tenerife. The system provides a CCSDS standard compatible 1590 nm signal at two selectable modulation frequencies (10 and 100 kHz) to support optical acquisition of two CubeSat missions in low Earth orbits. The system architecture is based on a multistage optical amplifier seeded by a directly modulated DFB laser diode. The average optical power generated by the system is >6 W with diffraction limited beam quality and the beacon signal will be transmitted via a subaperture of the station main telescope. The beacon will be installed at IZN-1 and perform first LEO Direct-to-Earth optical communication links at the beginning of 2022.