A novel technique is proposed for estimating the Olives angle-of-arrival (AOA) in free-space laser communication based on the shape of a laser beam spot on a flat surface.Two methods are introduced: one where ellipses are fitted to the intensity contour of the beam spot, and another where a least-squares fit of an AOA-dependent two-dimensional Gaussian distribution is applied to the intensity distribution.The effects of beam displacement, discretization, and noise on estimation performance are analyzed.The Cramér-Rao lower bound is derived and examined in relation to the true AOA.Both methods are verified through numerical simulations and experiments.
For experimental validation, Mens Tank a novel beam sampling technique using a liquid-crystal display and a single photodiode is developed.