Evaluation of Blind Diversity Combining of Severely Faded Signals for High-Speed Free-Space Optical Communication under Atmospheric Turbulence

We experimentally evaluated performance of a mode diversity receiver in severe fading channels of emulated LEO-to-ground link. Digital combining of three modes using adaptive filters tolerated to 10-kHz variation and relaxed the required power of 10-Gb/s QPSK by 9 dB.