Impact of pointing errors on performance of a ground-to-satellite laser uplink communication system based on M-ary pulse position modulation

The laser beam propagating in the ground-to-satellite laser communication system is affected by intensity scintillation due to atmospheric turbulence and pointing errors due to beam wander. These effects would greatly degrade the system performance. Pulse position modulation (PPM) is a power-efficient modulation scheme to overcome this problem. The effect of pointing errors on the performance of a ground-to-satellite laser uplink communication system with M-ary PPM is analyzed in this paper. The results show that pointing error degrades the system performance, and the effect is more significant for a shorter work wavelength. This work benefits the ground-to-satellite laser uplink communication system with M-ary PPM design.