High energy particle induced single event upset (SEU) is one of the most important factors affecting the laser satellite communication system.Its physical mechanism and main research methods are given out.The OMERE 3.4 software is used to calculate the SEU ratio of satellite-borne CMOS 2164 device.The calculation results have proved that optimizations of the orbit altitude and orbit inclination could effectively decrease the SEU ratio of electronic device in satellite optical communication system.To further reduce the single event effect,besides some simple protection methods like enhancing the shield,the device selection should be considered to improve the anti-radiation performance.