GAE-based sensorless adaptive optics for high-order wavefront aberration correction in coherent free-space optical communication.

Abstract

Coherent free-space optical communication (CFSOC) systems are strongly affected by atmospheric turbulence, which introduces wavefront aberrations and degrades coherent detection performance. Sensorless adaptive optics (SLAO) provides a compact solution for wavefront correction, but existing control algorithms often suffer from slow convergence and reduced robustness under strong turbulence and high-order aberrations. Here, we propose a grey-wolf-optimization-fused alpha evolution algorithm, termed GAE, for high-order sensorless wavefront correction in CFSOC systems. By combining coherent detection theory with Zernike-based wavefront modeling, the correction performance of GAE is evaluated under different turbulence strengths and aberration orders using mixing efficiency, bit error rate, and coupling efficiency as metrics. Across 200 random high-order wavefronts, 99% of the post-correction mean mixing efficiency values exceed 0.99, and the overall mean exceeds 0.998. These results indicate that GAE is a promising control strategy for robust SLAO-based CFSOC under complex atmospheric conditions.