LOLA (Liaison Optique Laser Aéroportée) is a French national demonstrator programme to achieve an optical link between an airborne carrier representative of the future medium- and high-altitude UAVs (MALE and HALE) and ESA’s Artemis geo-stationary communications satellite. EADS Astrium is prime on this programme, which is operational from 2006.
It will be used to characterise the propagation of light beams in the atmosphere and to validate the system performance capabilities of the link. The link will be used for secure transmission of information received from UAVs by operation centres a few thousand kilometres away, within about one second and at very high data rates. This high-capacity datastream will considerably reduce the time needed to transmit information from the theatre of operation, will improve control of information and will bring significant operational advantages.
The decision to pursue this demonstrator programme follows the success of the first-ever laser transmissions, using Astrium’s SILEX link established between CNES’ Spot 4 civil optical Earth observation satellite and the ARTEMIS telecommunication satellite. It shows clearly the relevance of optical links for dual or defence applications. It also further demonstrates Astrium’s expertise in the field of optical links for telecommunications applications.
