Study on the mean intensity from a cube corner reflector in atmospheric turbulence

Abstract

Cube corner reflector is widely used as the cooperative target in laser tracking, location and other systems and its reflected intensity distribution is of great significance to the design of cooperative target as well as to the theoretical study on the performance of laser radar system. An analytic algorithm for calculating the reflected intensity in atmospheric turbulence is presented in this paper, in which the effective reflective area of corner reflector is approximately taken as an ellipse, and the reflected beam is decomposed of a series of complex Gaussian functions. All these, combined with the extended Huygens-Fresnel principle, derive the expression of the mean received intensity from the reflector. The effects of incident angle, off-axis distance of the reflector, propagation distance and the strength of turbulence on the shape, asymmetry, beam width and spreading of the reflected field are calculated and discussed. atmospheric turbulence, cube corner reflector, complex Gaussian function, extended Huygens-Fresnel principle, mean intensity