Beyond the spectrum: how SatEnlight adds a new dimension to optical communications

Between late 2024 and spring 2025, SatEnlight introduced a series of technical insights explaining the principle behind its approach to next-generation optical communications.

The starting point is a growing challenge for satellite connectivity: more data needs to be transmitted, while traditional radio-frequency spectrum is increasingly congested and bandwidth availability is limited.

Moving from radio frequency to optical communications opens new possibilities. SatEnlight is exploring an additional degree of freedom within optical links through Orbital Angular Momentum, or OAM.

Light beams carrying different OAM states can have different spatial structures. By superimposing multiple optical vortices on the same physical link, different information channels can potentially be transmitted simultaneously.

This approach is known as Mode Division Multiplexing.

The objective is not simply to increase the power of a laser link, but to increase the amount of information that can travel through it by exploiting the spatial properties of light.

At the receiving end, SatEnlight’s patented technology is designed to locally sample the incoming OAM beams, recognise the original vortices and demodulate the information carried by the different channels.

The approach is also designed to be integrated with existing LaserCom architectures rather than requiring an entirely new communication ecosystem.

Throughout 2025 and 2026, these principles moved progressively from research towards increasingly demanding outdoor tests, with atmospheric turbulence mitigation becoming another central element of SatEnlight’s technological development.