Comparison of Timing Recovery Algorithms for Optical Feeder Links

Coherent free-space optical communication enables high-throughput communication between ground and satellites. However, the signal has to propagate through the atmosphere which causes intensity fluctuations in the received signal. Sudden drops in the signal-to-noise ratio due to the atmospheric channel may cause the timing recovery loop to diverge, resulting in large burst errors. In this work, we evaluate the impact the atmospheric channel has on the performance of different common timing recovery algorithms by performing numerical simulations of a ground-to-satellite link.