Performance of a satellite-to-ground downlink coherent lasercom system with random tracking error of receiver

We analyze the performance of a satellite-to-ground downlink coherent lasercom system taking into account the combined effects of atmospheric wavefront aberration and tracking error of the receiver. We revise the wavefront phase variance in the case where the tracking error of the receiver terminal is present. We consider the example of the BPSK modulation scheme and show that the tracking error of the receiver terminal greatly increases the bit error probability of the coherent system. We show the optimum aperture diameter of the receiver. This study can benefit the satellite-to-ground downlink coherent lasercom system design.