We evaluate the per unit power received power aperture averaged scintillation performance of fully and partially coherent sinusoidal and hyperbolic Gaussian beams. Our analysis includes fundamental Gaussian, cosh Gaussian, cos Gaussian and annular Gaussian beams. The method is based on our earlier introduced semi-analytic approach. Scintillation performance is measured upon dividing the aperture averaged scintillation by the received power. Assessment is made both for aperture sizes that are adjusted separately for full and partially coherent beams to capture 10% and 20% of the equal source power and also for fixed aperture sizes. This way, the scintillation performance of the different beams in question is compared. From this comparison, we find that partially coherent beams have lower scintillation than the fully coherent ones, when adjustable aperture size is used. But upon switching to fixed aperture size, the reverse happens and coherent beams become more advantageous. In all cases of comparison, small source sized annular Gaussian beam and large source sized Gaussian beam seem to offer the lowest scintillation when aperture size is adjusted to capture 20% of the equal source power. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
