ANAtOLIA : a Mobile Station for Site Availability Characterization for Optical Communications Links

The Atmospheric moNitoring to Assess the availability of Optical LInks through the Atmosphere (ANAtOLIA) is a station developed in the framework of a project funded by the European Space Agency which aims to ground-sites selection and assess their availabilities for optical links through the atmosphere. In addition to cloud cover, space-to-ground optical communications are limited by aerosols and atmospheric turbulence. Therefore, we are developing in the framework of the ANAtOLIA project, an innovative and efficiency instrumentation and studies to specify, accurately measure, analyze, characterize, and ultimately predict critical atmospheric parameters for the purposes of the selection of the Optical Ground Station (OGS) sites and the evaluation of their availability. The main objectives of ANAtOLIA project are to design, manufacture, procure and assembly a self-standing and autonomous ground support equipment, comprising cloud, aerosol and turbulence monitoring to deliver precise measurements of the atmosphere transmission. Then, to install and commission of these atmosphere monitors at selected ground locations in ESA member states or in their vicinity and to record continuously local cloud, aerosol information and atmospheric turbulence conditions for 24 months. The last objective is to correlate these local ground measurements with data available from other sources of atmospheric conditions. The main goal of these correlations is to improve knowledge of the optical link availability for selected OGS locations and to carry out a long-term validation of the optical link availability prediction methods. ANAtOLIA is a compact 24h mobile station consisting of the Generalized Monitor of Turbulence (GMT), the Reuniwatt Sky Insight camera and the Cimel photometer CE318-T.