Dave Caplan, Dave Geisler, Ryan Kingsbury, Gavin Lund, Jade Wang

Hands-on Lab Highlights

• Portable optical terminals 
  • Optical designs - mirrors, lenses, telescopes and custom 3D printed mounts
• Custom electronic circuits for laser transmitter and optical receiver optimization
• Software control and diagnostics
  • Data acquisition, clock recovery and threshold adjustments
• Free-space optical communications
  • Link challenges:  optical alignment, beam shape and waveform optimization, varying link distances, vapor and cloudy-fish tank obstructions
  • Digital data and analog audio signals
  • Communications performance: audio quality, bit-error rate (BER) measurement, eye diagrams