Performance evaluation of a new optical heterodyne FSK satellite communication system

A new optical heterodyne satellite communication system with two local oscillators is designed. For tracking the local oscillator laser in the receiver station, the radio frequency (RF) tracking note is transmitted with data at different band. The system performance is evaluated with considering laser beam divergence, thermal noise, signal laser phase noise, shot noise, modulation frequency deviation, vibration of satellite and weather condition. According to our evaluation, the system can transmit data above 2.5 Gbps with the BER lower than 10/sup -9/ and CNR of RF tracking note higher than 15 dB.