ORCLE

Program Manager: Dr. Larry Stotts

The Optical & RF Combined Link Experiment (ORCLE) seeks to develop combined radio frequency (RF) & free space optical (FSO) communications as well as networking technologies that exploit the benefits of complementary path diversity. This effort will demonstrate improved battlespace communications using a hybrid RF and FSO link in air-to-air-to-ground environments. The central challenge is to enable optical communications bandwidth without giving up RF reliability and "all-weather" performance. ORCLE will develop RF and FSO propagation channel analysis, coding techniques and modeling to include weather, atmospherics and aero-optics to provide the joint force CDR assured high-data rate communications. The technical objective is to prototype and flight demonstrate hybrid FSO/RF air-to-air-to ground links that combine the best attributes of both technologies and simulate hybrid network performance.