The Deeptech Plan was initiated by Bpifrance to promote disruptive innovation in France and strengthen French competitiveness in this field.

The 2-year Bpifrance Deeptech project will allow Cailabs to focus on development and industrialization of the TILBA-ATMO product, which improves free space optical communication. Today, Cailabs is marketing the first version of the product. Evolutions planned in the project will provide an operational, off-the-shelf, easy-to-use and affordable product designed for compact or embedded optical stations.

“Our first target will be compact ground stations for low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites, orbiting at an altitude between 400 km and 1000 km,” said David Allioux, Laser Communications Product Manager at Cailabs.

“Constellations, mostly nanosatellites, are being deployed on a massive scale. Optical technologies will have major role in enabling high-throughput and stealthy links, either for space telecom networks or for massive observation data transfer.”

Conversely, radiofrequency communications currently used have a tendency to saturate and are easily intercepted.

Cailabs also wants to deploy its solutions for on-board naval or airborne applications, and eventually to provide very high-throughput uplinks for GEO satellites (in high orbit, at 36,000 km) that are being studied in the Space Recovery Plan in which Cailabs is participating.

“There is a real excitement in laser communications worldwide,” said Jean-François Morizur, CEO of Cailabs. “Major players in the space industry, not only in France but also in Europe, the United States and Asia, such as SpaceX, TESAT and CSSG, are turning to these technologies, which make it possible to reach almost unlimited throughputs and open the door to quantum links.

“We want to position TILBA-ATMO as a standard for optical terminals below the stratosphere, i.e. everywhere outside the satellite. We would like to thank Bpifrance for its support, which will help make Cailabs a key player in optical ground stations.”