Research on the efficiency of coherent balanced detection

In the spatial coherent optical communication, after long distance transmission, the receiver needs to detect and extract the weak signal, and the balanced detection technology is the key technology in the coherent detection. Using balanced detection technology, not only can further improve the receiving sensitivity of coherent optical detection, but also can suppress the common mode intensity noise, so as to improve the output signal to noise ratio of the system. But the problems are (1) due to external causes (polarization control, input optical power loss error, atmospheric turbulence caused by decay, and so on),at both ends of the balanced detector’s input signal can not keep consistent (2) two arms of balanced detector electronic devices (including photodiode and amplifier electronic components) are difficult to achieve perfectly matched. The paper is based on the principle of coherent optical detection, firstly, the advantage of balanced detection compared to single detection is detailed analysis, it is shown that balanced detector used in coherent optical communication system and with the improvement of communication rate, this advantage will more obvious. The theoretical and experimental results have verified several important factors that affect the efficiency of coherent balanced detection, namely, the consistency of the detection response, the atmospheric turbulence and the tracking jitter. It is of reference significant to study the balance detection technology in the spatial coherent optical communication.