An analysis of adaptive optics compensation for atmospheric-turbulence-induced scintillation is presented with the figure of merit being the laser communications bit-error rate. The formulation covers weak, moderate, and strong turbulence; on-off keying; and amplitude-shift keying, over horizontal propagation paths or on a ground-to-space uplink or downlink. The theory shows that under some circumstances the bit-error rate can be improved by a few orders of magnitude with the addition of adaptive optics to compensate for the scintillation. Low-order compensation (less than 40 Zernike modes) appears to be feasible as well as beneficial for reducing the bit-error rate and increasing the throughput of the communication link.

© 2002 Optical Society of America

You do not have subscription access to this journal. Citation lists with outbound citation links are available to subscribers only. You may subscribe either as an OSA member, or as an authorized user of your institution.

Contact your librarian or system administrator
or
Log in to access OSA Member Subscription

You do not have subscription access to this journal. Cited by links are available to subscribers only. You may subscribe either as an OSA member, or as an authorized user of your institution.

Contact your librarian or system administrator
or
Log in to access OSA Member Subscription

You do not have subscription access to this journal. Article level metrics are available to subscribers only. You may subscribe either as an OSA member, or as an authorized user of your institution.

Contact your librarian or system administrator
or
Log in to access OSA Member Subscription

Related Journal Articles

• Indirect measurement of a laser communications bit-error-rate reduction with low-order adaptive optics (AO)
• Power-scalable phase-compensating fiber-array transceiver for laser communications through the atmosphere (JOSAB)
• Atmospheric compensation with a speckle beacon in strong scintillation conditions: directed energy and laser communication applications (AO)
• Binary phase-only filtering for turbulence compensation in fiber-coupled free-space laser communication systems (AO)
• Influence of atmospheric phase compensation on optical heterodyne power measurements (OE)

Related Conference Papers

• Transmission of Classical Information Over a Noisy Quantum Channel
• Transmission of Classical Information Over a Noisy Quantum Channel
• Efficient, Adaptive Wave-Front Control for High-Order Adaptive Optics
• Solving Propagation Problems in Turbulence Using Filter Functions and Mellin Transforms
• Optimality, Observers and Controllers in Adaptive Optics
• Atmospheric Turbulence Outer Scale Profile for MCAO Specifications