Interleaving to mitigate burst errors due to dynamic pointing and tracking losses

Scintillation mitigation is a key aspect of communication performance for lasercom links. Scintillation is most often associated with turbulent channels, but can also be caused by residual pointing and tracking dynamics. In high-performance terminals on quiet platforms, robust line-of-sight stabilization can minimize jitter to a small fraction of a beamwidth, so that fading due to pointing and tracking is small enough to be compensated with link margin. However, scintillation mitigation techniques can potentially enable lower cost terminal designs and facilitate hosts with larger base disturbances. Here, we investigate the use of interleaving to mitigate fading induced by pointing and tracking losses. The results can guide system designers in selecting when interleaving is an appropriate tool for mitigating pointing and tracking dynamics in a lasercom link.