The feasibility of laser experiments for measuring atmospheric turbulence parameters

Abstract

An investigation of the feasibility of several line‐of‐sight propagation experiments utilizing lasers in studying atmospheric turbulence has shown that it is possible, theoretically, to find the permittivity spectrum, Φ(K), or its associated correlation function from measurements of the correlation function of amplitude, phase, or angle of arrival over parallel line‐of‐sight paths. Although the phase variations are relatively insensitive to variations in the assumed permittivity spectrum, the angle‐of‐arrival and amplitude measurements are more sensitive and hence would be more suitable for attempting to determine Φ (K) experimentally. From the point of view of communications analysis, the results show that the assumed Φ (K) is not too important in the analysis of phase variations but is quite important in the analysis of angle‐of‐arrival and amplitude variations.

Optical and millimeter line-of-sight propagation effects in the turbulent atmosphere

“…Early simulation work concerning the use of line-of-sight experiments to determine how the sensitivity of different measurements depends on the form of the refractiveindex spectrum was carried out by Strohbehn (1966Strohbehn ( , 1970a. In the first article a geometrical optics approach was used, and in the second article this work was extended to include diffraction effects.…”

Remote sensing of the troposphere

“…The problem is to determine the parameter that has the desired path weighting function (see 25), or equivalently, spatial resolution. Strohbehn (1966Strohbehn ( ), (1970 discusses the general problem of remote probing of turbulence using line-of-sight propagation effects and the sensitivity of each wave parameter to different assumed refractivity spectra. The treatment to follow will consider only the line-of-sight propagation of high-frequency, plane EM waves.…”