Optics Valley Technical Series: New Space-Commercial Satellite Communication

The satellite communication market is poised for exponential growth and represents a major new opportunity for optical communications, primarily for low Earth orbit (LEO) connections between satellites. The driving forces underpinning this growth include decreased hardware and launch costs, large investments originating from the private sector, and the growing demand to cover underserved areas.

Leveraging fiber communication technology for space applications requires addressing key challenges — surviving the launch and successfully operating in the harsh environment of space. In addition to reliability issues that must be addressed, specific performances of optical power and dimensions and power dissipation will also be discussed by Dr. Xu.

Combining extensive experience with vertical integration (from materials to subsystems) can make the difference in providing the optimal solution for custom optical communications applications to successfully pioneer the new space frontier.

About the Presenter:

Dr. Jack J. Xu is VP Marketing, Telecom in Coherent Corp. He has been in Telecom industry for 25+ years starting at Nortel and in various companies which have become part of the rich heritage of Coherent. He was a pioneer in the development of the first liquid crystal based DGE and WB platform in 2000 at LambdaFlex (acquired by Avanex/Coherent), then VP of sales and marketing for CoAdna/Coherent, a major supplier of WSS for the first ROADM metro network deployment. He was the first product manager for the uITLA and closed major design wins for Emcore/Intel. Jack graduated from The University of Science and Technology China and holds a Ph.D. in Physics from Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.

Optics Valley, a committee of the Arizona Technology Council, is one of the leading clusters for optics, photonics and astronomy in the world. Optics Valley’s mission is to catalyze, convene and connect optics, photonics, astronomy and the supporting business interests throughout Arizona.	Coherent Corp. is a global leader in materials, networking, and lasers for the industrial, communications, electronics, and instrumentation markets. The company is headquartered in Saxonburg, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1971 to manufacture high-quality materials and optics for industrial lasers. Today, the company operates in more than 20 countries around the world.	Earle Associates Arizona is a Phoenix based manufacturer’s rep firm, focused on supporting applications ranging from embedded to enterprise.  We use our technical expertise and experience to optimize product lifecycles and represent a wide range of leading technology suppliers in the areas of FPGA’s, CPU’s, Memory, Analog, Power, Wireless and engineering services.