Student Communications, Optical or Electrical Engineering (f/m/x) - Communications payload design for GEO VHTS

The optical communication group of DLR’s Institute of Communications and Navigation develops experimental laser communication systems for optical data links between airborne carriers such as airplanes or satellites and optical ground stations as well as demonstrator platforms for testbed system verifications. The system development covers several disciplines such as optics, mechanics, electronics and programming.

The successful applicant will support our team in the development of optical, photonic and communications systems for very-high-throughput satellite communications applications. Foremost, she/he will perform theoretical analysis and simulation of various techniques to realise analogue and digital signal transmission. Electrical and optical signal distortion analysis would conclude the theoretical analytical part, which shall be followed by experimental work on the laboratory prototype, where the relevant system parametres can be verified. Successful laboratory tests would then qualify the setup to be tested by the student with the team in an outdoor testbed.

It is an excellent opportunity to work in a cutting-edge topic, gain experience on real optical hardware, and improve your engineering skills.

Tasks:

• optical and photonic communications systems design
• interface definition between the optical feeder- and RF-based user-link
• performance analysis
• setup of a laboratory demonstrator and performance verification
• programming of Python or Matlab simulation tools