Evaluation of a photonic lantern spatial demultiplexer-based receiver for optical communication

Free Space Optical (FSO) receivers based on spatial demultiplexers offer significant advantages to mitigate atmospheric turbulence for FSO communications. We evaluate the performance of a Photonic Lantern (PL) based receiver for this application. A modal decomposition approach is presented to assess the PL coupling efficiency. We validate the numerical approach with an experimental characterization of the PL. We compare the PL receiver to a commercial spatial demultiplexer with a simulation of received optical wavefront in a FSO communication scenario. The PL and receiver shows a higher collection efficiency than standard FSO receiver and a strong robustness to phase and intensity perturbation.