Abstract

Results of an experiment to measure the scintillation at a satellite from a ground-based laser transmitter are presented. The GEOS-II satellite in a nearly circular orbit of 1250 km was illuminated by a ground-based laser tracking station using a 4880-Å continuous-wave argon laser. A detector aboard the satellite measured the incident light and telemetered the data to recording equipment on the ground. Log-amplitude variance, probability distributions, and scintillation frequency distributions are derived from the data. The probability distribution is shown to be log-normal. Log-amplitude variance and normalized power spectral density are shown to be within the limits measured for stellar scintillation.

© 1972 Optical Society of America

Scintillation and transmitter-aperture averaging over vertical paths*

P. J. Titterton
J. Opt. Soc. Am. 63(4) 439-444 (1973)

Saturation of Scintillation Magnitude in Near-Earth Optical Propagation*

Paul H. Deitz and Neal J. Wright
J. Opt. Soc. Am. 59(5) 527-535 (1969)

Experiments on Turbulence Characteristics and Multiwavelength Scintillation Phenomena*

J. Richard Kerr
J. Opt. Soc. Am. 62(9) 1040-1049 (1972)

Scintillation statistics measured in an earth–space–earth retroreflector link

Jack L. Bufton
Appl. Opt. 16(10) 2654-2660 (1977)

Simplified Equation for Amplitude Scintillations in a Turbulent Atmosphere*

J. W. Strohbehn and T. I. Wang
J. Opt. Soc. Am. 62(9) 1061-1068 (1972)