Research on Bit Error Rate in the Presence of Local Wavefront Aberration in Intersatellite Laser Communications

Local distortions in lenses of transmitter optical system could further deteriorate the performance of intersatellite laser communications (lasercom). Bit error rate (BER) for on-off keying system is investigated considering the combined influence of local distortion and pointing error, without considering the noise of the detector. It is shown that BER varies regularly with the characteristic parameters of local distortion. Peak-to-valley value that is usually used to evaluate lens machining precision is determined, and the key principles for selecting lenses are given. This paper can contribute to the lasercom system design.