[Laser] NLOS Optical Comms

[Zack Widup]

Yes, that should be easy.

I was involved in one of the first LIDAR projects, which was an experiment 
to study upper atmosphere air flow at the University of Illinois.  We used 
a rhodamine 6G dye laser, which excited the "D" lines of sodium in the 
upper atmosphere.  A telescope with a Fresnel lens about 1000 feet away 
used a photomultiplier tube to detect the returned light from the sodium.

So I figure it should be easy enough to excite something up there to get 
returns that can be used.

Zack W9SZ


On Mon, 15 Nov 2004, Andy Maiden wrote:

> Dear All,
> 
> I was hoping i could pick your collective brains regarding Laser Comms. I'm a post-doc student at the University of Durham in the UK and I have been asked to look into the possibility of non-line-of-sight free-space optical comms. My supervisor hopes that a signal can be detected from a laser pointing straight upward by receivers located within a mile or so radius of the transmitter- so far so good, but he also wants the system to operate in daylight, clouds or no clouds, fog or no fog and at high frequency! My initial reaction is that this is a non-starter- what do you think?!
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Andy Maiden.