Adaptive Optics is a rapidly growing to be an essential technology enabler in the field of Free Space Optical Communications. The DLR Institute for Communications and Navigation has been operating a number of experiment AO systems for a variety of applications in FSOC for over 6 years.

The challenges in FSOC AO are similar but subtly different to astronomical AO. In FSOC high frame rates of over 2kHz and low RTC latencies are required, but the problem size is typically much reduced in comparison to the state-of-the-art systems designed for the upcoming Extremely Large Telescopes. At DLR-KN, a software has been developed to control FSOC AO systems with high frame rates and has been successfully demonstrated in a number of AO systems. The software currently relies only on high performance CPU based computers, though acceleration is also under consideration for future AO systems.

Here, we describe the design drivers and resulting architecture of the Real-Time Control System that powers the DLR AO demonstrators and report on benchmarking results demonstrating its computational performance.

Dailos Guerra Ramos, Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V.