Florida lasercomm company breaks the size-performance barrier for optical ground terminals

X-lumin has successfully demonstrated a roundtrip optical transmission from its 15cm Optical Ground Terminal (OGT) to a retroreflector-equipped LEO satellite, and back, with the ability to track downlink signals that are 10⁶ times dimmer than the current standard of 25µW/m².

The demonstration was repeated over multiple passes during recent testing, marking the first time a portable, low SWaP (Size, Weight, Power) terminal has closed a roundtrip optical link.

Roundtrip optical links present exponential difficulty compared to one-way transmission: the signal must traverse atmospheric turbulence twice, requiring µrad pointing stability and pW detection sensitivity. X-lumin’s OGT achieved this using a terminal consuming <20W and weighing <50kg.

“Rather than basing our system on large legacy astronomical telescope systems, we instead reimagined a system that was less affected by turbulence, required less infrastructure, and can be replicated at a lower cost,” said John Stryjewski, PhD, CTO and Co-Founder of X-lumin. “We’ve delivered a new portable optical ground terminal that is highly capable, and interoperable with both commercial and government standards.”

Development Background

The compact terminal was developed under a Direct to Phase Two SBIR Other Transaction Authority (OTA) with the Space Development Agency, part of the U.S. Space Force, building on X-lumin’s previous deployments of larger 50 – 70cm terminals for both government and commercial customers. While the system was designed to meet SDA 3.1 Specifications, it is modem-agnostic and is interoperable with multiple communication standards, including 100 Gbps and higher coherent modulation schemes.

The X-lumin OGT performed the roundtrip demonstration on multiple occasions over the last month with multiple satellites.

This achievement in optical laser communication technology proves that compact and portable optical lasercomm ground terminals can deliver enterprise-grade space communication capabilities without the infrastructure burden of fixed laboratory-scale systems, or large arrays of RF dishes and significant spectrum allocations.

Industry Context

The demonstration addresses a bottleneck in emerging space architectures. The industry is racing toward deploying optical intersatellite links (OISLs) and orbital data centers – like Amazon LEO, Starlink, Axiom Space – and adding capabilities like AI, Quantum Positioning, and Hyperspectral imaging, all of which are projected to increase daily data demand by 3.5X over the next four years, according to McKinsey Research. Networks will fail to realize the expected benefits of these innovations if the ground-to-space pathway remains bottlenecked by lower throughput microwave systems.

“For space infrastructure to succeed, it must have greater security, more capacity and draw less power per gigabyte than RF can deliver – optical is inevitable.” said Zev Suissa, Chief Growth Officer, X-lumin, “X-lumin’s system changes the economics of optical ground networks, making this highly scalable solution to deploy today.”

In addition to working with SDA and Space Force on two Direct to Phase Two SBIRs, commercial companies like Cisco have added X-lumin as a partner, and recently X-lumin was one of seven companies selected for the inaugural cohort of a collaboration between Space Florida and Seraphim Space.

Source: BUSINESS WIRE