Monostatic lidar in weak-to-strong turbulence

    Authors

    L. C. Andrews;R. L. Phillips

    Abbreviated Journal Title

    Waves Random Media

    Keywords

    ATMOSPHERIC-TURBULENCE; ENHANCED BACKSCATTERING; PROPAGATION; BEAM; WAVE; Physics, Multidisciplinary

    Abstract

    A heuristic scintillation model previously developed for weak-to-strong irradiance fluctuations of a spherical wave is extended in this paper to the case of a monostatic lidar configuration. As in the previous model, we account for the loss of spatial coherence as the optical wave propagates through atmospheric turbulence by eliminating the effects of certain turbulent scale sizes that exist between the scale size of the spatial coherence radius of the beam and that of the scattering disc. These mid-range scale-size effects are eliminated through the formal introduction of spatial scale frequency filters that continually adjust spatial cut-off frequencies as the optical wave propagates. In addition, we also account for correlations that exist in the incident wave to the target and the echo wave from the target arising from double-pass propagation through the same random inhomogeneities of the atmosphere. We separately consider the case of a point target and a diffuse target, concentrating on both the enhanced backscatter effect in the mean irradiance and the increase in scintillation in a monostatic channel. Under weak and strong irradiance fluctuations our asymptotic expressions are in agreement with previously published asymptotic results.

    Journal Title

    Waves in Random Media

    Volume

    11

    Issue/Number

    3

    Publication Date

    1-1-2001

    Document Type

    Article

    Language

    English

    First Page

    233

    Last Page

    245

    WOS Identifier

    WOS:000170142300005

    ISSN

    0959-7174

    Share

    COinS