The effect of pointing vibration on the performance of a laser μsatellite network with an optical pre-amplifier

Laser satellite communication uses free space as a propagation medium for various applications, such as inter-satellite communication or satellite networking. This system includes a laser transmitter and an optical receiver. In order to communicate, the line-of-sight of the transmitter and the receiver must be aligned. However, mechanical jitter reduce alignment between the transmitter laser beam and the receiver field of view (FOV), which results in pointing errors. The outcome of pointing errors is fading of the received signal which leads to degrade link performance. We consider system where the optical preamplifier is incorporated into the receiver, and derive a bit error probability (BEP) model that takes into account the statistics of the pointing error.