Free-space laser communication systems have the potential to provide flexible, high-speed connectivity suitable for long-haul intersatellite and deep-space links. For these applications, power-efficient transmitter and receiver designs are essential for cost-effective implementation. State-of-the-art designs can leverage many of the recent advances in optical communication technologies that have led to global wideband fiber-optic networks with multiple Tbit/s capacities. While spectral efficiency has long been a key design parameter in the telecommunications industry, the many THz of excess channel bandwidth in the optical regime can be used to improve receiver sensitivities where photon efficiency is a design driver. Furthermore, the combination of excess bandwidth and average-power-limited optical transmitters has led to a new paradigm in transmitter and receiver design that can extend optimized performance of a single receiver to accommodate multiple data rates. This paper discusses state-of-the-art optical transmitter and receiver designs that are particularly well suited for average-power-limited photon-starved links where channel bandwidth is readily available. For comparison, relatively simple direct-detection systems used in short terrestrial or fiber optic links are discussed, but emphasis is placed on mature high-performance photon-efficient systems and commercially available technologies suitable for operation in space. The fundamental characteristics of optical sources, modulators, amplifiers, detectors, and associated noise sources are reviewed along with some of the unique properties that distinguish laser communication systems and components from their RF counterparts. Also addressed is the interplay between modulation format, transmitter waveform, and receiver design, as well as practical tradeoffs and implementation considerations that arise from using various technologies.
