Research - Intersatellite links - Light-Emitting Diodes for intersatellite links: LEDs4ISLs

conceptual diagram of LED ISL
Wood, Ivancic, Dörpelkus
A variety of work has been done on using LEDs for short-range intersatellite links, useful for small satellite clusters. In just over a decade this has gone from concept to preparing demonstration hardware for testing in Low Earth Orbit.

Brief video presentations on this topic:

Summary slides:

Flight hardware ready for launch

Papers in this field:

William Edmonson has supervised doctoral studies on this:

Funding sources:

Work proposing using solar panels as link receivers, with an LED downlink:

Other work discussing exploiting Fraunhofer lines as relatively noise-free channels for in-space links includes:

ShindaiSat and FITSAT-1 demonstrated LED communications to ground. LEDs can also be used for satellite tracking, as planned with LEDSAT (Facebook page).

Work on using LEDs inside a satellite, for intra-satellite communication between components or payloads:

Flight hardware on orbit
The SatelLife internal LED communication module was launched onboard the INSPIRE-SAT 7 nanosatellite on a delayed SpaceX flight, 15 April 2023. Video shows module from 3:30 onwards.

Papers in this field:

Lloyd Wood (lloydwood@users.sourceforge.net)