Systematic Analysis and Design of Lunar–Earth Optical Communication System Based on Phase-Sensitive Amplifier
The development of the Lunar–Earth space urgently requires a miniaturized space laser communication system with a high speed and high sensitivity. However, traditional photon-counting communication and coherent communication technologies face challenges in meeting these two core requirements, forming a critical bottleneck that limits the performance enhancement of long-distance lunar communication links. To address this issue, this paper comprehensively analyzes the power attenuation, wavelength drift, and phase jitter over the Lunar–Earth communication channel and proposes a system improvement method that integrates a phase-sensitive amplifier (PSA) with coherent communication technologies. Additionally, a comprehensive system simulation model is established to evaluate the proposed approach. The simulation results demonstrate that the system can effectively adapt to the Lunar–Earth communication scenario. Utilizing QPSK-modulated signals, the system achieves a communication rate of up to 10 Gbps, with receiving sensitivities of 0.7 photons per bit. This approach effectively meets the demand for high data rates and high sensitivity, thus providing a technical pathway for the engineering implementation of ultra-long-distance space laser communications.
Authors
- L Zhang
- Zhixuan Zhu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0006-6075-0278)
- X. D. Wang
- Xintong Guo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0001-5980-4244)
- Jun Huang
- Jianyu Wang
Institutions
- Hefei University (CN)
- Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics (CN)
- University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Applied Sciences
- Published
- 2026-02-17
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3390/app16041977
- Primary Topic
- Optical Wireless Communication Technologies
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00