Turbulent phase noise on asymmetric two-way ground-satellite coherent optical links

Bidirectional ground-satellite laser links suffer from turbulence-induced scintillation and phase distortion. We study how turbulence impacts on coherent detection capacity and on the associated phase noise that restricts clock transfer precision. We evaluate the capacity to obtain a two-way cancellation of atmospheric effects despite the asymmetry between up and down link that limits the link reciprocity. For ground-satellite links, the asymmetry is induced by point-ahead angle and possibly the use, for the ground terminal, of different transceiver diameters, in reception and emission. The quantitative analysis is obtained thanks to refined end-to-end simulations under realistic turbulence and wind conditions as well as satellite cinematic. Simulations make use of the reciprocity principle to estimate both down and up link performance from wave-optics propagation of descending plane waves. These temporally resolved simulations allow characterising the coherent detection in terms of time series of heterodyne efficiency for different system parameters. We show Tip/Tilt correction on ground is mandatory at reception for the down link and as a pre-compensation of the up link. Good correlation between up and down phase noise is obtained even with asymmetric apertures of the ground transceiver and in spite of pointing ahead angle. The reduction to less than 1 rad 2 of the two-way differential phase noise is very promising for clock transfer.