A software-defined receiver for laser communications using a GPU

This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Thesis: M. Eng., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2018Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (pages 43-46).Laser commiunication systems provide a high data rate, power efficient communication solution for small satellites and deep space missions. One challenge that limits the widespread use of laser communication systems is the lack of accessible, low-complexity receiver electronics and software implementations. Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) can reduce the complexity in receiver design since GPUs require less specialized knowledge and can enable faster development times than Field Programmnable Cate Array (FPGA) implementations, while still retaining comparable data throughputs via parallelization. This thesis explores the use of a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) as the sole computational unit for the signal processing algorithms involved in laser conmnunications.by Joseph Matthew Kusters.M. Eng.M.Eng. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Scienc