Phase Screen Models for Numerical Computation

To the extent that propagation disturbances can be approximated by an equivalent phase-screen, there are analytic models that allow computation of the power-spectrum of the intensity of the field as it propagates away from the phase screen.  The analysis involves an integration to characterize the structure initiation as a phase perturbation and a second integration to propagate the structure to the observation plane.   In real-world applications the integrations are two dimensional.  However, the field-aligned structure in the ionosphere can be exploited to reduce the computations to one-dimensional integrations.

This motivated a revisit of early computations based on two-dimensional and one-dimensional phase screens.  To test the numerical computations, which were performed by Charlie Carrano at the Boston College Institute for Scientific Research, analytic results for unconstrained inverse power-law spectra were used.  Disparities between the computations and the analytic results motivated a careful look at the analytic results derived from complicated limiting operations.  Some errors were found that clarified some long standing disparities between results by Victor Rumsey for isotropic structures and my own two-dimensional results, which should agree with the isotropic results if isotropy was assumed.  The new results are summarized in PowerLawPhaseScreenHighlights, with computational details presented in a separate note. PowerLawPhaseScreenReview,

An updated book errata sheet can be found ScintTheoryErrata

About Chuck

Retired research engineer. Recently published book "The Theory of Scintillation with Applications in Remote Sensing," John Wiley IEEE Press, 201
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