We present an automatic repeat request (ARQ) free space optical (FSO) system, which consists of a pulse position modulation (PPM) hard decision and an ARQ. The new ARQ’s data error detection is based on a PPM hard decision’s results and can eliminate the traditional ARQ information redundancy. The results of the numerical simulation have a good agreement with theoretical analysis and show that the ARQ-FSO system can effectively improve the bit error rate (BER) performance of the direct hard decision PPM system. Additionally, the proposed system significantly improves the average throughput efficiency compared to traditional ARQ systems. These characteristics make the ARQ-FSO system suitable for application in low BER and complexity FSO scenarios.