EVIDENCE OF LOG NORMALLY DISTRIBUTED INTENSITY FLUCTUATIONS OF AN ATMOSPHERICALLY DEGRADED LASER-BEAM

The results of a theoretical and experimental investigation of the amplitude fluctuations of an atmospherically degraded laser beam are presented. The research was aimed at deducing from the statistics of the revealed signal, distorted by the non-linearity of the detecting apparatus, information on the statistics of the impinging signal. A particular set of experimental data are examined, for which it is possible to exclude a Rice–Nakagami distribution for the amplitude fluctuations of the impinging wave in favour of a log–normal distribution. © 1979 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.