Wavefront aberration correction in a free-space optical communication link using only the fiber-coupled optical power as a feedback mechanism

We introduce an adaptive system which can compensate for coupling losses caused by aberrations in a free space communication system, using solely the fiber-coupled power metric. The system is based on a phase manipulations employed by a Spatial Light Modulator (SLM). The compensating phase is determined by an iterative feedback algorithm based on estimating the first 15 Zernike polynomials, and which takes into account the coupling between them. We developed the algorithm for best coupling as well as proved the concept in a setup based on a Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCoS) SLM.