Optical scintillation measurements in a desert environment I: direct link ranges of 2 to 24 km

Experiments have been carried out over a series of ranges at China Lake in which the irradiance fluctuations, angle-of-arrival variance and images of the scintillation patterns were recorded, together with meteorological parameters. The decrease in scintillation index associated with the lower turbulence conditions at sunset was observed for the shorter ranges but not for the longer ranges of 19 and 24km where the propagation was in the saturated regime.