Space-grade Opto-electronic Interfaces for Photonic Digital and Analogue Very-high-throughput Satellite payloads

2026-07-22

The satellite market experiences a paradigm shift with the rise of VHTS that is challenging the capabilities of existing SatCom systems. Under increasing capacity/flexibility and stringent SWaP requirements primes are embracing a technology migration relying on photonics. TAS is the first prime to introduce optical interconnects in a commercial digital processor and this is expected to open the opportunity for photonics penetration in every part of the satellite payload (P/L). However the current critical photonic building blocks fail to deliver the big promise for high-performance and low SWaP photonics-enabled VHTS. These are the opto-electronic (O/E) interfaces - transceivers, modulators and photodetectors - that are deployed in the highest volumes and connect equipment at the edge and within the payload. They suffer from limitations in speed, bandwidth, reliability and most importantly size and power consumption which are still off-target, while most of them are available from US. SIPhoDiAS aims to advance these components to address O/E performance, size and power and at the same time enhance their reliability and demonstrate flight-ready parts at TRL 7, enabling for the first time photonic P/L systems that hit the right SWaP targets. SIPhoDiAS will deliver the following impressive advancements: up to 224 Gb/s radiation hard transceivers 4.5x faster and 8.5x more energy efficient than state-of-the-art (SOTA), 50 GHz modulators 2 times smaller having 7 times more bandwidth per unit area than SOTA, 40 GHz photo-detectors 50% lighter, with 4.5 times more bandwidth per unit area and 66% better responsivity. Modules will be system integrated and tested in representative sub-systems to show optical interconnect demonstrators running 350% faster with 80% less power and 50% less mass and photonic-RF frequency converters extended up to Q/V band (40-50 GHz) at 50% less mass. SIPhoDiAS technoloy will be made in Europe and will contribute to the European SatCom roadmaps.

Greece, Germany, France, Switzerland, Spain, United Kingdom

2026-02-15