Bit error rate measurements of diffraction by non-true-time-delay, holographic optical element

The impact on digital communications performance from non-true-time-delay beam steering by a holographic optical element (HOE) is investigated. Free-space data transmission experiments were performed using an HOE with a 5 mm diameter and 33 diffraction angle at the data rate of 10 Gbit/s with return-to-zero and non-return-to-zero formats. For this diffraction case, a small penalty of 0.7 dB at 10^-9 bit error rate is observed for both formats. This penalty is smaller than the optical loss but would be expected to increase for larger diameters and data rates.