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Free-space optical (FSO) communications systems are under development by NASA to support a wide variety of missions (e.g., long-distance deep-space links and near-Earth low-Earth orbiting (LEO) links) that propagate through the turbulent atmospheric channel to reach a ground station. In many cases, the ground receiver couples light into single-mode fiber (SMF) for subsequent detection. A communications signal coupled from free-space into receiver optics, and ultimately to SMF, after propagation through the atmosphere experiences time- and space-varying intensity and phase changes. Despite the sensitivity introduced by the need to couple into a single spatial mode, this approach often offers superior system performance because it enables the use of widely-available high-performance SMF components. The impact of the atmospheric channel for any particular link depends on several parameters …