Aiming at the transceiver technology in wireless optical communication, this paper combs the relevant research progress from two aspects of free space optical communication and underwater optical communication, summarizes the development trend of wireless optical communication transceiver technology from communication bands, modulation modes, and photodetectors according to different scenarios, analyzes the application prospect of single photon detection in wireless optical communication. Then we report our team's results of applying superconducting series nanowire single-photon detectors to space optical communication, which is expected to provide reference and ideas for related research.