R&D 100 winner of the day: TeraByte InfraRed Delivery (TBIRD): 200 GB/s free space optical communications

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.