TeraByte InfraRed Delivery (TBIRD): 200 Gigabits-per-Second Free Space Optical Communications
Established in 1963, the R&D 100 Awards is the only S&T (science and technology) awards competition that recognizes new commercial products, technologies and materials for their technological significance that are available for sale or license. The R&D 100 Awards have long been a benchmark of excellence for industry sectors as diverse as telecommunications, high-energy physics, software, manufacturing, and biotechnology. This 2021 R&D 100 winner is listed below, along with its respective category.
Category: IT/Electrical
Developers: MIT Lincoln Laboratory
Co-Developers: National Aeronautics and Space Administration
United States
Product Description:Low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellites generate huge amounts of data daily and getting this data back to Earth in a timely, error-free manner is currently challenging and costly. MIT Lincoln Laboratory’s TeraByte InfraRed Delivery (TBIRD) technology revolutionizes what is possible in this area. TBIRD technology enables dramatic increases in the achievable data volume delivered from LEO to ground. This means MIT’s technology has completely transformative implications for satellite operations in all scientific, commercial and defense applications. In contrast to current technologies, TBIRD offers direct-to-Earth LEO links utilizing the abundant optical spectrum, commercial parts and a custom protocol. This creates very high burst data rates, even with short, infrequent link durations. MIT Lincoln Laboratory has performed successful proof-of-concept demonstrations, showing the system can deliver peak throughputs approaching 200 Gbps (gigabits per second) and up to 10 terabytes daily, per ground station. This is significantly higher than the rates achievable by other LEO-to-ground technologies, while still offering reduced size, weight and power (SWaP) requirements and lowering overall costs.
Developers: MIT Lincoln Laboratory
Co-Developers: National Aeronautics and Space Administration
United States
Product Description:Low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellites generate huge amounts of data daily and getting this data back to Earth in a timely, error-free manner is currently challenging and costly. MIT Lincoln Laboratory’s TeraByte InfraRed Delivery (TBIRD) technology revolutionizes what is possible in this area. TBIRD technology enables dramatic increases in the achievable data volume delivered from LEO to ground. This means MIT’s technology has completely transformative implications for satellite operations in all scientific, commercial and defense applications. In contrast to current technologies, TBIRD offers direct-to-Earth LEO links utilizing the abundant optical spectrum, commercial parts and a custom protocol. This creates very high burst data rates, even with short, infrequent link durations. MIT Lincoln Laboratory has performed successful proof-of-concept demonstrations, showing the system can deliver peak throughputs approaching 200 Gbps (gigabits per second) and up to 10 terabytes daily, per ground station. This is significantly higher than the rates achievable by other LEO-to-ground technologies, while still offering reduced size, weight and power (SWaP) requirements and lowering overall costs.
TBIRD - 2020 R&D 100 - Figure 1