The performance of lasercom systems operating in the atmosphere is reduced by optical turbulence, which causes irradiance fluctuations in the received signal. The result is a randomly fading signal. Fade statistics for lasercom systems are determined from the probability density function (PDF) of the irradiance fluctuations. The expected number of fades per second and their mean fade time require the joint PDF of the fluctuating irradiance and its time derivative. Theoretical integral expressions, as well as closed form, analytical approximations, were developed for the joint PDF of a gamma-gamma distributed irradiance and its time derivative, and the corresponding expression for the expected number of fades per second. The new approximation for the conditional PDF of the time derivative of a gamma-gamma irradiance is a zero mean Gaussian distribution, with a complicated irradiance depending variance. Fade statistics obtained from experimental data were compared to theoretical predictions based on the lognormal and gamma-gamma distributions. A Gaussian beam wave was propagated through the atmosphere along a horizontal path, near ground, in the moderate-to-strong optical turbulence. To characterize the propagation path, a new method that infers atmospheric propagation parameters was developed. Scintillation theory combined with a numerical scheme was used to infer the structure constant, Cn2, the inner scale and the outer scale from the optical measurements. The inferred parameters were used in calculations for the theoretical PDFs. It was found that fade predictions made by the gamma-gamma and lognormal distributions provide an upper and lower bound, respectively, for the probability of fade and the number of fades per second for irradiance data collected in the moderate-to-strong fluctuation regime. Aperture averaging effects on the PDF of the irradiance fluctuations were investigated by comparing the irradiance distributions for the three receiver apertures at two different values of the structure parameter and, hence, different values of the coherence radius. For the moderate-to-strong fluctuation regime, the gamma-gamma distribution provides a good fit to the irradiance fluctuations collected by finite-sized apertures that are significantly smaller than the coherence radius. For apertures larger than or equal to the coherence radius, the irradiance fluctuations appear to be lognormally distributed.

An accurate PDF of irradiance for a FSO channel is important when designing a laser radar, active laser imaging, or a communications system to operate over the channel. Parameters such as detector threshold level, probability of detection, mean fade time, number of fades, BER, and SNR are derived from the PDF and determine the design constraints of the receiver, transmitter, and corresponding electronics. Current PDF models of irradiance, such as the Gamma-Gamma, do not fully capture the effect of aperture averaging; a reduction in scintillation as the diameter of the collecting optic is increased. The Gamma-Gamma PDF of irradiance is an attractive solution because the parameters of the distribution are derived strictly from atmospheric turbulence parameters; propagation path length, Cn2, l0, and L0. This dissertation describes a heuristic physics-based modeling technique to develop a new PDF of irradiance based upon the optical field. The goal of the new PDF is three-fold: capture the physics of the turbulent atmosphere, better describe aperture averaging effects, and relate parameters of the new model to measurable atmospheric parameters. The modeling decomposes the propagating electromagnetic field into a sum of independent random-amplitude spatial plane waves using an approximation to the Karhunen-Loeve expansion. The scattering effects of the turbulence along the propagation path define the random-amplitude of each component of the expansion. The resulting PDF of irradiance is a double finite sum containing a Bessel function. The newly developed PDF is a generalization of the Gamma-Gamma PDF, and reduces to such in the limit. An experiment was setup and performed to measure the PDF of irradiance for several receiver aperture sizes under moderate to strong turbulence conditions. The propagation path was instrumented with scintillometers and anemometers to characterize the turbulence conditions. The newly developed PDF model and the GG model were compared to histograms of the experimental data. The new PDF model was typically able to match the data as well or better than the GG model under conditions of moderate aperture averaging. The GG model fit the data better than the new PDF under conditions of significant aperture averaging. Due to a limiting scintillation index value of 3, the new PDF was not compared to the GG for point apertures under strong turbulence; a regime where the GG is known to fit data well.