LAUSR

Abstract Although there is an urgent need, it is still a significant challenge to establish high-speed laser communication links between satellites to ground stations owing to the influence of atmospheric turbulence. Adaptive optics (AO) is a considerable scheme to solve the problem. In this paper, the primary experiment of satellite-to-ground laser communication with the data rate of 5Gbps and BPSK modulation is carried out through a 500 m horizontal channel with relatively strong turbulence. A 137-element AO unit is used for correcting the phase distortion brought by the turbulence. When the AO unit is working, both the received optical power and bit error rate (BER) (All the eight experimental results of BER at different time are below 10−6.) are improved significantly. The primary results demonstrate that the ground station with AO technology has the capability to establish the satellite-to-ground laser communication links and provide a reference for the design of satellite terminals.