We demonstrate a portable system integrated with time comparison, absolute distance ranging, and optical communication (TRC) to meet the requirements of space gravitational wave detection. A 1 km free-space asynchronous two-way optical link is performed. The TRC realizes optical communication with 7.7×10-5 bit error rate with a Si avalanche photodiode single-photon detector, while the signal intensity is 1.4 photons per pulse with the background noise of 3×104 counts per second. The distance measurement uncertainty is 48.3 mm, and time comparison precision is 162.4 ps. In this TRC system, a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser diode with a power of 9.1 µW is used, and the equivalent receiving aperture is 0.5 mm. The TRC provides a miniaturization solution for ultra-long distance inter-satellite communication, time comparison, and ranging for space gravitational wave detectors.

We report a method to reduce the detection delay temperature drift for a single-photon detector based on the avalanche photodiode (SPAD). Both the SPAD and the comparator were temperature stabilized, resulting in an ultra-low temperature drift at 0.01 ps/°C. A stable time deviation as 0.15 ps over 1000 s was realized, while the ambient temperature fluctuated rapidly from 24°C to 44°C. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on the ultra-stable delay SPAD detector in the case of rapid increase or decrease of ambient temperature. It is helpful to improve the stability of onboard detectors for optical laser time transfer between ground and space.