Measurements of scintillation over a 17.55-km horizontal path

Mark Bernhardt; John W. Buckle; Christopher Dainty; Fred C. Reavell; Victor Ruiz-Cortes; Meryl Welch; Nicholas J. Wooder

doi:10.1117/12.371316

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10 December 1999 Measurements of scintillation over a 17.55-km horizontal path

Mark Bernhardt; John W. Buckle; Christopher Dainty; Fred C. Reavell; Victor Ruiz-Cortes; Meryl Welch; Nicholas J. Wooder

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Proceedings Volume 3866, Optics in Atmospheric Propagation and Adaptive Systems III; (1999) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.371316
Event: Remote Sensing, 1999, Florence, Italy

Abstract

An extensive set of measurements of scintillation over a 17.55 km path have been made using point sources at wavelengths of 633 nm and 10.6 micrometers , and using an extended thermal source at 3 - 5 micrometers and 8 - 12 micrometers . The basic data consists of normalized variances, probability histograms and normalized autocorrelation functions of intensity. The main aim was to product a set of data that might be used as inputs to models for scintillation. The measurements, as expected, showed a very large range of observed fluctuations, with a highest recorded normalized variance at 633 nm of approximately equals 34 and an average value of 4.8 (averaged over 130 data sets), with a standard deviation of 4.1. The probability histograms have been fitted using log- normal, exponential, log-normally modulated exponential and K distributions. As a general rule, the log-normal model gives a good fit in a large number of cases. Power spectra and correlations functions were measured and show the expected trends with wavelength, with average correlation times (defined in the text) in the range 10 msec (visible) to 68 msec (CO₂).

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Mark Bernhardt, John W. Buckle, Christopher Dainty, Fred C. Reavell, Victor Ruiz-Cortes, Meryl Welch, and Nicholas J. Wooder "Measurements of scintillation over a 17.55-km horizontal path", Proc. SPIE 3866, Optics in Atmospheric Propagation and Adaptive Systems III, (10 December 1999); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.371316