The second optical system 250 of the secondary device stays in a given frame position in the secondary search pattern 700 for a first set amount of time while the secondary device acquires a set of frames from the given position. The first set amount of time may be based on the frame acquisition rate of the secondary device or the amount of time it takes for the primary device to focus on the beacon beam 24 of the secondary device. For example, the one or more processors 210b of second communication device 200b may be configured to acquire frames at about 5000 frames per second using receiver 240b via second optical system 250b. The one or more processors 210b may further be configured to take 20 frames at a frame position in the secondary search pattern 700. Therefore, the second optical system 250b may be at the starting frame position 0 for the first set amount of time of about 0.004 seconds. The first set amount of time may further be based on a size of the pointing hardware 260b and the available power. Alternatively, the first set amount of time may be at least double the time it takes for first communication device 200a to establish a communication link 22a after detecting the beacon beam 24b of the second communication device 200b.

The one or more processors 210 of the secondary device may determine whether a beacon beam 24 transmitted from the primary device is in the set of acquired frames at the given frame position. Spot centroiding or other known methods of beacon detection may be used by one or more processors 210 of the secondary device to determine whether a beacon beam 24 is in one or more of the frames acquired from the given frame position.