Quantifying the Effect of Atmospherically-Induced Pointing Errors in Optical Geostationary Satellite Feeder Links Using Transmitter Diversity

Abstract

Optical links to geostationary (GEO) satellites suffer from atmospherically-induced beam wander which leads to pointing errors at the satellite causing deep fades. In this paper, we show the benefit of transmitter diversity in reducing the fades caused by beam wander. We derive an analytical expression for the reduction of overall scintillation index for a given number of transmitted beams with Gaussian profile in a multiple-input single-output (MISO) system considering solely the effect of beam wander. The transmitted power, beam divergence angle and pointing jitter are kept as free parameters as in the real situation. Moreover, the optimized ratio of transmitted powers between multiple beams is obtained though simulations for a two-fold transmitter diversity to obtain minimum overall power scintillation index (PSI).