Scintillation in an Earth-to-Space Propagation Path

Abstract

Results of an experiment to measure the scintillation at a satellite from a ground-based laser transmitter. The GEOS-II satellite in a nearly circular orbit of 1250 km was illuminated by a ground-based laser tracking station using a 4880-A CW 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.-