BER Analysis of Coherent Free Space Optical Communication Systems with Holographic Modal Wavefront Sensor

Abstract

Degradation of bit-error-rate (BER), caused by atmospheric turbulence, seriously hinders the performance of coherent Free Space Optical (FSO) communication systems. An adaptive optics system proves to be effective in suppressing the atmospheric turbulence. The holographic modal wavefront sensor (HMWFS) proposed in our previous work, noted for its fast detecting rates and insensitivity to beam scintillation, is applied to the coherent FSO communication systems. In this paper, based on our previous work, we first introduce the principle of the HMWFS in brief and give the BER of the coherent FSO with homodyne detection in theory, and then analyze the improvement of BER for a coherent FSO system based on our previous simulation works. The results show that the wavefront sensor we propose is better for weak atmospheric turbulence. The most obvious advantages of HMWFS are fast detecting rates and insensitivity to beam scintillation.