File:A SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE OF A MIMO OPTICAL SYSTEM TO RAPIDLY STREAM ENCODED DATA IN THE TACTICAL AND MARITIME ENVIRONMENT (IA asystemarchitect1094562848).pdf

The National Defense Strategy (NDS) has highlighted the need to be prepared to compete with near-peer competitors. Specifically, the Marine Corps has a critical requirement for resilient and survivable networks capable of operating in contested and denied environments. The free space optical communication (FSOC) channel provides opportunity to mitigate many electronic attack (EA) threats. This thesis describes a system architecture that is capable of mitigating the challenging effects of the FSOC channel. Model-based systems engineering (MBSE) tools and a discrete event simulation are used to model the operation of a multiple-input, multiple-output (MIM) FSOC system. A full factorial design of experiments is used to explore the breadth of the design space. Statistical analysis is applied to the simulation’s outputs to identify the design decisions that are most critical. This study employs a tradeoff analysis between the bit error rate (BER), transmission rate, and power consumption to identify candidate architectures. There are two main conclusions in this thesis. Firstly, the error correction capacity of the coding scheme must increase as atmospheric turbulence increases. Secondly, as the laser array increases beyond eight independent channels, the system is capable of mitigating the negative effects of the FSOC channel. This concept merits further development to provide critical communications capabilities in a contested environment.

Subjects: systems engineering; information sciences; free space optics; MIMO; systems architecture; low probability of detection; LPD; LPI