Performance of satellite-to-ground communications link between ARTEMIS and the optical ground station

The European Space Agency has built an optical ground station sited at the Observatorio del Teide operated by the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias. This station, equipped with a 1m telescope, has a multipurpose configuration for inorbit commissioning and checkout of laser communication payloads. Since November 2001, the bidirectional link with satellite ARTEMIS has been established in more than 80 successful sessions. In this paper, we analyze the influence of turbulence parameters on the performance of communications; in the bidirectional ground to space laser communication experiments. The link performance observed in the satellite-to-ground channel showed average bit error rates of 10(-6) over long durations (20 minutes), however in some occasions BER's of at least 10(-9) 10(-10) over durations of 5 to 30 minutes were observed. The behavior of the Bit Error Rate measurements performed in different turbulence conditions is characterized.