Atmospheric turbulence characterization with simultaneous measurement of phase, angle of arrival, and intensity in a retroreflected optical link

Abstract

Free-space optical transmission through the Earth’s atmosphere is applicable to high-speed data transmission and optical clock comparisons, among other uses. Fluctuations in the refractive index of the atmosphere limit the performance of atmospheric optical transmission by inducing phase noise, angle-of-arrival variation, and scintillation. The statistics of these deleterious effects are predicted by models for the spatial spectrum of the atmospheric refractive index structure. We present measurements of phase fluctuations, angle-of-arrival variations, and scintillation, taken concurrently and compared with models for the atmospheric refractive index structure. The measurements are also cross-compared by deriving independent estimates of the turbulence structure constant . We find agreement within an order of magnitude for derived values for all three metrics.