Abstract
A method for reducing the influence of background light in an optical tracking system is described. In a ground-to-geostationary-satellite laser link, an increase in the shot noise current for solar background radiation is slight, but the dispersion of this background light causes errors in the cells of the tracking receiver. The new method suppresses this effect by rotating the polarization of the received laser beam. The frequency bandwidth of the optical tracking is increased by using two half-wave plates to speed up the polarization rotation.