Low-order atmospheric turbulence effects in Gaussian beam weak scintillation and fade probability

Low-order turbulence effects dominate the random irradiance fluctuations in a weakly-scintillated Gaussian beam subject to a certain set of initial conditions, leading to a natural departure from log normal irradiance behavior. This departure conflicts with earlier theoretical studies of weakly scintillated beams which have traditionally assumed log normal behavior. The dominance of low order effects leads to an increase in the theoretical scintillation and probability of fade relative to predictions based on the assumption of log normal behavior. This paper recounts a detailed derivation of a low order turbulence model that successfully captures the non-log normal behavior, and reviews theoretical scintillation and probability of fade predictions that follow from the model.

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