Optical Communication

Building on its 25+ years of expertise in designing tailor-made optical systems for the most demanding space programs, Bertin Technologies, through its Bertin Winlight and Bertin Alpao brands, is now providing a range of innovative components, sub-systems and equipment for both satellite-to-ground (Optical Feeder Link) and inter-satellite (OISL) links.

This new offering by Bertin Technologies will help power the emerging new space market by providing optimized optical space communications for GEO, MEO and LEO satellites. These technologies will enable us to provide very high bandwidth in a constantly growing market with exponential demand for data transfer.

Bertin Winlight and Bertin Alpao’s free space optical communication equipment also provide building blocks to replace or complete physical optical fibre networks on the ground with stellar fibre links, at a time where land and underwater cables are both expensive to build or maintain and challenging to secure as they become potential targets for belligerent activities.

Also, by extending the reach of ground fibre networks, Bertin’s spatial communication products enable data exchanges with mobile ground stations or sea vessels with optical speed, high bandwidth and secure links.

What’s inside?

Bertin Winlight designs and manufactures cutting-edge, versatile solutions to link stellar fibers to each other and to the ground, bringing connectivity to everyone, everywhere, every time.

FiTT: At the heart of the system is a FiTT (Fiber to Telescope Terminal) unit. This element converts optical signals from traditional fiber optics into stellar impulses and back. Bertin Winlight’s FiTT equipment can also be configured for Quantum Key Distribution (QKD).

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Adaptive Optics: Bertin Technologies’ subsidiary Bertin Alpao offers a complete range of adaptive optic (AO) components and systems to compensate for atmospheric turbulence and deliver clear inbound signals coming from satellites as well as improved pointing capabilities for uplink signals to the satellites.

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HPMUX: With stellar links requiring substantially more power than conventional fiber, Bertin Winlight designed a high power multiplexer, capable of handling 50 W to 100 W per stream.

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Bertin Winlight also provides self-aligning telescope configurations designed for long range imaging purposes, suitable for either fixed on-site operation or vehicle-mounted operation, as well as circulators, isolators, interleavers, collimator and qualified filters.

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Bertin’s optical communication offering is currently under active development. Yet it relies on strong collaboration with satellite providers and ground station makers. Furthermore, its technology has already withstood the test of space. In 2023, the GEO satellite built by Airbus for Arabsat embarked a FiTT demonstrator. For over a year, Bertin’s FiTT unit provided a bi-directional 10 Gb/s upward and downward spatial communication link — a world first — offering valuable operational feedback that is helping our teams fine tune our portfolio of off-the-shelf optical communication products.