Cailabs

Cailabs is a photonics company in Rennes, France. It builds ground systems that make laser communications ready for real use, mainly for satellite and defence networks.

The company says the next bottleneck for laser links is on the ground. Satellite and defence networks are moving toward optical links with more capacity and a lower signature. The challenge is no longer to prove the idea but to build ground systems that work at scale.

Cailabs engineers ground systems for real world use. These include integration into existing networks, remote operation and scalable rollouts. It wants laser links to be reliable and available on demand, as routine as radio, not one-off demos.

Its main laser communications products are optical ground stations and line of sight optical terminals. It also supplies technology building blocks, using its TILBA technology to improve optical links through the atmosphere on land, sea, air and space. The company is building an Optical Ground Network and offers OGS as a Service. It says its links run at 10 Gbps or more and work with existing standards and terminals.

Aerospace and defence work also covers optronics, including mid infrared, directed energy and rangefinder applications. The company sees its optical ground stations as a base for very high throughput space-based telecommunications.

Beyond aerospace, Cailabs applies its light shaping skills to industrial laser processing. This includes laser welding of copper, aluminium and steel, laser additive manufacturing, and micro-processing of surfaces, metal and glass. Its CANUNDA laser welding heads are one example.

The company also serves fibre networks, with products named AROONA and ONEMODE for local area networks and PROTEUS for optical networks of the future. Customers can use a contact form to ask about laser communications projects, and the topic menu includes custom optical solutions for emerging applications. The company offers news, a blog, technical publications, an agenda of events and a careers section.

Services

• Optical ground stations
• Line of sight optical terminals
• OGS as a Service
• Technology building blocks
• Optronics
• Laser welding
• Laser additive manufacturing
• Micro-processing
• Local area fibre networks
• Optical networks of the future