Intensity fluctuations for source arrays in turbulent atmosphere - art. no. 630308

Intensity fluctuations are formulated for source arrays in weakly turbulent horizontal atmospheric links. Source array is composed of point sources separated by variable distances in the transverse source directions. Formula yielding the on-axis scintillation index for the source array is derived by employing the Rytov solution for the structure and correlation functions in the extended Huygens Fresnel principle. Through numerical results, variations of the scintillations versus the array parameters such as the size of the array, spacing between the array elements, amplitudes and phases of the individual sources in the array are investigated. Numerically evaluated intensity fluctuations for such array parameters are compared with the well known single point source scintillations. We are interested to understand whether the use of a source array will give favorable intensity fluctuations in atmospheric communication links.