BER Performance of Photon Counting PPM vs. DPSK for Satellite Communications

Expressions for the BER of M-ary PPM & biphase DPSK modulations in the presence of noise are derived using analytical, statistical methods. The PPM expression is verified via Poisson statistics based simulation. BER expressions are then applied to a representative set of receiving telescope & sky spectral radiance parameters in order to assess performance of PPM & DPSK relative to one another. Finally, efficiency & additional considerations are discussed.