Low-cost high performance adaptive optics real-time controller in free space optical communication system

This paper proposed a low-cost and high performance adaptive optics real-time controller in free space optical communication system. Real-time controller is constructed with a 4-core CPU with Linux operation system patched with Real-Time Application Interface (RTAI) and a frame-grabber, and the whole cost is below $6000. Multi-core parallel processing scheme and SSE instruction optimization for reconstruction process result in about 5 speedup, and overall processing time for this 137-element adaptive optic system can reach below 100 us and with latency about 50 us by utilizing streamlined processing scheme, which meet the requirement of processing at frequency over 1709 Hz. Real-time data storage system designed by circle buffer make this system to store consecutive image frames and provide an approach to analysis the image data and intermediate data such as slope information.