Hybrid Atmospheric Compensation in Free-Space Optical Communication

Since the direct-gradient (DG) method uses the Shack-Hartmann wave front sensor (SH-WFS), based on the phase-conjugation principle, for atmospheric compensation in free-space optical (FSO) communication, it cannot effectively correct high-order aberrations. While the stochastic parallel gradient descent (SPGD) can compensate the distorted wave front, it requires more calculations, which is sometimes undesirable for an FSO system. A hybrid compensation (HC) method is proposed by properly using the DG method and SPGD algorithm to improve the performance of FSO communication. Simulations show that this method can well compensate wave-front aberrations and upgrade the coupling efficiency with few computations, preferable correction results, and rapid convergence rate.