Optical communications systems have been deployed in a wide variety of satellite applications in recent years, since they can beat traditional RF communications in both speed and power efficiency. However, such systems are challenging to align, often requiring beams to be precisely steered with sub-milliradian precisions to align terminals that are separated by long distances. Many existing pointing, acquisition, and tracking (PAT) systems which can automatically align communications terminals require either an external communication method, such as already-established radio communications, or require a source of feedback during the acquisition process such as a retroreflector. Additionally, common steering devices used tend to exhibit a large size, weight, and power (SWaP), limiting widespread deployment, and often can only control the laser beam direction, but not higher-order terms influencing beam shape and size.

This research track seeks to create high-speed, low-SWaP PAT systems that rely on minimal information by combining MEMS spatial light modulators which can control the outgoing laser beam size to improve search speeds with novel computational algorithms which can enable high-speed acquisition with minimal information sharing.