But that means you need to have a different laser pointed at every single individual aircraft right? Doesn’t really scale.
I suppose you can do time-sharing. And use mems-mirrors to quickly move the beam between different targets.
Laser TDMA! :-)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-division_multiple_access
You can probably do phased arrays. (It might already be a phased array.)
Pretty sure phased array LASERs are not yet a thing.
I was not sure, but they are!
https://cga.anu.edu.au/research/activities/laser-beam-steeri...
https://www.darpa.mil/research/programs/excalibur
I guess in some ways even the fancy multi diode fiber lasers are phased arrays, just with the single goal of higher output power.
Looks like these are in early development and nowhere near ready like this test was.
Lasers are coherent emitters; you can definitely make interference patterns with them, so I don't see why LASER MIMO wouldn't be possible, in theory.
Yeah but this is research, if they're to come up somewhere, where else would it be?
If starlink satellites get laser downlink, it might work :P
laser downlink to one point, isn't it? Not to 300 moving aircrafts at once.
I suppose you can do time-sharing. And use mems-mirrors to quickly move the beam between different targets.
Laser TDMA! :-)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-division_multiple_access
You can probably do phased arrays. (It might already be a phased array.)
Pretty sure phased array LASERs are not yet a thing.
I was not sure, but they are!
https://cga.anu.edu.au/research/activities/laser-beam-steeri...
https://www.darpa.mil/research/programs/excalibur
I guess in some ways even the fancy multi diode fiber lasers are phased arrays, just with the single goal of higher output power.
Looks like these are in early development and nowhere near ready like this test was.
Lasers are coherent emitters; you can definitely make interference patterns with them, so I don't see why LASER MIMO wouldn't be possible, in theory.
Yeah but this is research, if they're to come up somewhere, where else would it be?
If starlink satellites get laser downlink, it might work :P
laser downlink to one point, isn't it? Not to 300 moving aircrafts at once.