The Optical RF Communications Adjunct (ORCA) program seeks to develop combined radio frequency (RF) & free space optical (FSO) communications, as well as networking technologies that exploit the benefits of complementary path diversity.
The Optical RF Communications Adjunct (ORCA) program seeks to develop combined radio frequency (RF) & free space optical (FSO) communications, as well as networking technologies that exploit the benefits of complementary path diversity. ORCA will develop RF and FSO propagation channel analysis, coding techniques, and modeling to include weather, atmospherics and aero-optics to provide the joint force commander assured high-data rate communications. The technical objective is to prototype and flight-demonstrate hybrid FSO/RF air-to-air-to ground links that combine the best attributes of both technologies and simulate hybrid network performance.