The initial pointing unit of the line of sight (LOS) operating in the open-loop mode is an important part of the space laser communication system, which directly determines the size of the field of uncertainty (FOU) and the length of the scan time. In this paper, the composition and working principle of the initial pointing of the LOS in the dynamic laser communication system are studied in detail. The initial pointing angle (IPA) of the LOS is derived by applying the principle of coordinate transformation, and the factors affecting the size of the FOU are analyzed. It is proposed to introduce the extended Kalman filtering technique into the initial pointing to reduce the size of the FOU. In the demonstration experiment of the dynamic laser communication (including airship–ship and aircraft–aircraft), the dual-antenna global positioning system/inertial navigation system composite device is applied to obtain position, attitude, and other parameters in real-time to realize the performance test of the initial pointing system. The size of the FOU is measured with a target-viewing camera, and the filtered and unfiltered results were compared.

The inter-satellite laser link is the backbone of the next inter-satellite information network, and ranging and communication are the main functions of the inter-satellite laser link. This study focuses on the inter-satellite laser ranging based on the pseudo-code correlation technology. In this paper, several typical laser-ranging methods have been compared and we determined that the laser pseudo-code ranging architecture is more suitable for the inter-satellite laser communication link. The pseudo-code ranging system is easy to combine with a digital communication system, and we used it to calculate integer ambiguity by modulating the time information. The main challenge of the ranging system is range precision, which is the main focus of this paper. First, the framework of the pseudo-code ranging system is introduced; the ranging architecture of dual one-way ranging is used to eliminate the clock error between the two transceivers, and then the uncertainty of the phase detector is analyzed. In the analysis, the carrier to noise ratio and the ranging code rate are constrained by the laser communication link margin and the electronic hardware limitation. Therefore, the relationship between the sampling depth and the phase detector uncertainty is verified. A series of optical fiber channel laser pseudo-code ranging experiments demonstrated the effects of sampling depth on the ranging precision. By adjusting the depth of storage, such as the depth of 1.6 Mb, we obtained a pseudo-range measurement precision of 0.33 mm ($1\sigma$), which is equivalent to 0.0001 times code subdivision of 10.23 Mcps pseudo-code. This paper has achieved high precision in a pseudo-range measurements, which is the foundation of the inter-satellite laser link.

Space dynamic communication base stations are characterized by high mobility, flexible deployment and wide coverage. It has a wide range of needs in the fields of emergency communication, earthquake relief and island communication. To solve the problem of a limited number of users due to the limited bandwidth of space base stations, so we should improve the reliability and efficiency of data transmission between space mobile base stations. According to the characteristics of the airship platform, a blimp-borne laser communication terminal applied to space dynamic base stations is designed to meet the demand for bi-directional transmission of 5G signal laser carriers in space between airships. The experimental results show that the blimp-borne laser communication terminal achieves an overall technical index of capture probability is better than 98%, the average capture time is 5s, the tracking accuracy is better than 6–15 μrad, the communication rate is 2.5 Gbps and BER is 1E-7. In order to realize the real-time evaluation of the performance of laser communication system under the turbulent channel and guide the research of anti-turbulence fading method, a real-time test method of communication channel turbulence characteristics based on the principle of light intensity scintillation is proposed. And the real-time test of turbulence characteristics of airship inclined link and the horizontal link is completed. The research results play a positive role in promoting the development of 5G mobile technology and space optical communication technology.

In space optical communications, it is important to obtain the most efficient performance of line of sight (LOS) pointing system. The errors of position (latitude, longitude, and altitude), attitude angles (pitch, yaw, and roll), and installation angle among a different coordinates system are usually ineluctable when assembling and running an aircraft optical communication terminal. These errors would lead to pointing errors and make it difficult for the LOS system to point to its terminal to establish a communication link. The LOS pointing technology of an aircraft optical communication system has been researched using a transformation matrix between the coordinate systems of two aircraft terminals. A method of LOS calibration has been proposed to reduce the pointing error. In a flight test, a successful 144-km link was established between two aircrafts. The position and attitude angles of the aircraft have been obtained to calculate the pointing angle in azimuth and elevation provided by using a double-antenna GPS/INS system. The size of the field of uncertainty (FOU) and the pointing accuracy are analyzed based on error theory, and it has been also measured using an observation camera installed next to the optical LOS. Our results show that the FOU of aircraft optical communications is 10 mrad without a filter, which is the foundation to acquisition strategy and scanning time.

Space laser communication, with its strong anti-jamming capability, high transmission rate and good adaptability, offers hope for the establishment of 5G mobile networks in areas that are not conducive to the erection of cables, such as islands and remote land areas. Turbulent scintillation effect is one of the important factors affecting the performance of laser communication, which can lead to the increase of communication BER and even communication interruption. Based on the working principle of the photoelectric detector in atmospheric turbulence, an optical communication receiving system based on the detector gain factor regulation control is designed, which calculates the scintillation variance according to the received signal in real time, establishes the function conversion relationship between the scintillation variance and the gain factor, realizes the closed-loop regulation control of the detector gain factor, and improves the SNR of the receiving system. A ground-based 13km static laser communication experiment was set up to test the reception performance, and the test results show that the system reduces the communication BER by more than two orders of magnitude and can be kept at 1E-6 under medium to weak turbulence (discriminated by flash variance) at a communication rate of 2.5Gbps. The technology was applied to the test of laser 5G signal transmission between the airship and the ground, and for the first time, the mobile communication (access network) signal transmission with a downlink speed of 1.230Gbps and an uplink speed of 76.4Mbps is realized, which verified the performance of mobile signal transmission between the mobile base station and the fixed station on the ground.