Adaptive optics technology is an effective way to alleviate the effect of turbulence on atmospheric optical communication. The atmospheric turbulence optical communication system model and bit-error-rate (BER) evaluation model are established, then the difference between the transmitter adaptive optics(AO) correction and receiver AO correction working in atmospheric optical communication on different turbulence intensities is simulated. The simulation results demonstrate that AO applied in communication is beneficial for increasing the received energy of detector and decreasing the BER. Correction of receiver AO is better than transmitter AO when aperture is 250 mm. However, transmitter AO can control the intensity fluctuation while receiver AO cannot. Therefore, both transmitter AO and receiver AO have the approximate efficacy to improve BER.