Scottish researchers to fire next generation of global communication

A Scottish university has begun developing a state-of-the-art telescope to test next generation global communications.

The new £2.5m facility will support satellite-quantum secure communications, believed to be near “unhackable”.

The Quantum Communications Hub Optical Ground Station (HOGS) will receive messages from a satellite to demonstrate and test this technology and is expected to be fully operational by late 2024.

The Heriot-Watt University facility will feature cameras, sensors, and other photonic technologies enabling HOGS to expand how it can be used for both UK-based and international researchers and industry partners.

HOGS will also be directly connected to a new university campus optical fibre network which is also under development, allowing teams to demonstrate deployment of optical, quantum, and hybrid communication networks.

It is being built as part of the Quantum Communications Hub project and funded through the UK National Quantum Technologies Programme.

Professor Tim Spiller, director of the Quantum Communications Hub, said: “Satellites will form an essential part of future worldwide quantum communications, and in-orbit demonstrator missions are essential in proving the UK’s capabilities as a leader in secure quantum communications. The ground-based receiver is clearly a key element of any mission, and we look forward to the HOGS becoming operational at Heriot-Watt University.”

The project, based at the university’s Edinburgh campus, has been more than five years in the making, project leader Ross Donaldson told Holyrood.

When China launched the first-ever quantum communications satellite in 2016, it kickstarted everything, he explained: “It got the rest of the world thinking, what are we going to do in the quantum space technologies sector?

“Everyone wanted to work in a satellite because that’s the cool thing – having your work up in space.

“And I then thought, 'well, actually the ground station needs to be as practical as the satellite'.”

In 2018, Donaldson received a Royal Academy of Engineering fellowship, and a year later his team secured the cash needed to buy all the equipment.

“It’s been a very long time, but good things have to be done properly”, he said.

With help from fellow Heriot-Watt researchers, who are currently leading a hub to develop an “ultra-secure” quantum internet, the HOGS team also hopes to “connect to other ground stations across the world”.

Scotland is the “best place” to build more practical quantum technologies for space, Donaldson claimed: “You have the satellite teams. You also have a load of photonic companies in the central belt of Scotland, and quantum expertise, so you have the three big teams needed to do it.”

He continued: “In the next five years, we want to connect to every quantum satellite launching from the UK, Europe and the US, so hopefully [we will] connect to at least five quantum satellites over the next five years.

“I could see Heriot-Watt contributing to that, becoming like a headquarters or a centre for optical communications in the UK”.

It is hoped that the facility will also unlock new research on space environmentalism by finding debris, as we as developing new techniques to find objects that have gone undetected and what those objects are. The telescope will also offer opportunities for teams to explore new de-orbiting techniques for small space debris using lasers.

“I want to be able to identify and build our database of space debris that's in orbit, in the hope that we can then work with teams to deorbit that”, Donaldson explained.

Meanwhile, the telescope will also support innovative activities for future laser communication networks which provide services like 6G.

Researchers from Bristol University, Strathclyde University, and York University will also support the project.