Experimental study of a model digital space optical communication system with new quantum devices

We report a digital space optical communication system with new features both in the transmitting and in the receiving ends. The diode laser source is stabilized to within ±100 kHz by locking its frequency to the transmission peak of a Faraday anomalous dispersion optical filter (FADOF). The optical filter in the receiver uses two FADOF's that are linked to eliminate the multipeak structure and achieve a single-peak bandwidth of ~1 GHz. The detection sensitivity of this system is 23 times higher than that of a system with a traditional interference filter.