Investigation of optical intensity fluctuation in the presence of satellite vibration for intersatellite optical communications

For intersatellite optical communications, vibration-induced pointing jitter severely influences the communication quality as a result of intensity fluctuation. In this paper the probability density function of optical intensity in the receiver plane is derived. Then the scintillation index is proposed to identify the intensity fluctuation. Finally the bit-error rate (BER) in the presence of satellite vibration is obtained as a function of the beam divergence angle and vibration variance. Qualitative analysis is given, and the numerical simulation is carried out for demonstration. It is suggested that for the desired BER of 10^-6 and 10^-9 the ratio of the half divergence angle to the root mean square value of vibration should be design as 8.7012 and 10.7513 respectively. This work can benefit the intersatellite optical system design.