Adaptive receive telescope array for coherent free-space laser communications

Free-space optical communication requires receive and transmit antennas in the form of telescopes. In comparison with single-aperture (“monolithic”) telescopes mainly considered so far, a phased telescope array offers many fundamental advantages: • reduced size of optical elements, • inherent modularity, therefore • redundancy (i. e. graceful degradation instead of total breakdown in case of a subtelescope failure), • reduced overall size and mass, • non-mechanical fine pointing.