Experimental setup for investigation of laser beam

propagation along horizontal urban path

Rui Barrosa , Sarah Kearya , Lydia Yatchevaa , Italo Toselliab , Szymon Gladysza
a Fraunhofer

Institute of Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation,

Gutleuthausstr. 1, 76275 Ettlingen, Germany;
b University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida,USA;
ABSTRACT

It is well known that a laser beam propagating through optical atmosphere is affected by atmospheric turbulence.
In this paper, we describe an experimental double-passage system for laser beam propagation along a horizontal
urban path that can be useful for applications such as free-space laser communications. The setup includes a
telescope to focus a laser beam on a retro-reflector, which is located 410 meters away, and the optical-test bench
with which we measure intensity and phase fluctuations of the reflected beam. In our measurements scintillation
is decreasing with distance from the center of the pupil. This shows the need for further theoretical modelling
of double-passage systems.
Keywords: Adaptive optics, atmospheric turbulence, scintillation

1. INTRODUCTION
Atmospheric turbulence is one of the most significant factors limiting the performance of electro optical systems
and thus can severely affect laser beam propagation along horizontal paths especially over urban terrain. In
recent years, the need to develop new and better devices for applications like active and passive imaging or
free-space laser communications has become a reality. Consequently, a deeper understanding of atmospheric
turbulence along horizontal paths, and development of new adaptive optics solutions has become a critical
subject. In our adaptive optics laboratory, the Mewlon300-AO test-bench setup was built for laser beam
propagation experiments along a horizontal urban path (Fig. 1). We want to gather the data for applications
such as directed-energy and free-space laser communications.
The project goal is to build an AO double-passage system capable of focusing a laser beam ( ' 632.8 nm)
onto a retro-reflector, which is located 410 m away. Currently, we measure intensity fluctuations and wavefront
distortions of the reflected beam and test the susceptibility of the Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor (SHWFS)
to scintillation. In the future the setup will be used as the main optical system for testing of the holographic
wavefront sensor.1
A number of field tests have been executed at Fraunhofer IOSB facilities in the city of Ettlingen (Germany).
The measurements were performed over a horizontal path of 410 m. The emitter/receiver system is located
at our AO laboratory at a height of 12 m and, at approximately the same height, a 1-inch retro-reflector was
installed on a church tower. The path covers a large yard, some rooftops, a road and the church garden. The
experiments were performed during daytime in the summer of 2014.
Rui Barros: Fraunhofer-IOSB, Gutleuthausstrasse 1, Ettlingen, Germany, Telephone: +49 (0)7243 992 206

Figure 1: Mewlon 300 test-bench pointing at the retro-reflector located on the church tower, 410 m away from the AO
laboratory.

2. SYSTEM DESIGN
The concept of our setup is illustrated in Figure 2. The setup was designed and optimized to work in the visible
spectrum ( ' 632.8 nm) for easy calibration. However, for the purpose of free-space laser communications,
further modifications should be made in order to work in the near-infrared range ( ' 1.55 m). From an optical
point of view, the setup is a double-passage system where a Gaussian beam propagates from a transmitter
through a random media, and is focused onto a retro-reflector. The beam propagates back through the same
atmospheric turbulence. A SHWFS and a high-speed CMOS camera are placed in conjugated planes with the
telescope entrance pupil in order to measure phase aberrations and intensity fluctuations, respectively.

Figure 2: Optical principle of the Mewlon 300 AO test bench.

2.1 Optical system architecture

Figure 3 depicts the setup used for measuring the intensity fluctuations and phase aberrations at the entrance
pupil of the telescope. The system is fed by a 35 mW linearly polarized, red laser beam (output beam) which
by means of a converging lens (L1) is focused in the image plane of the Dall-Kirkham telescope (Mewlon 300)
conjugated with the retro-reflector plane located at the tower, 410 m away. The reflected light from the retroreflector is collected by the telescope and re-collimated by L2. By placing a Pellicle Beamsplitter (BS2) after
L2 it is possible to produce two images of the entrance pupil of the telescope, where one is dedicated to the
SHWFS and the other imaged again by a relay system (L3 + L4) onto the camera (Dalsa Genie HM640, C2).
Both SHWFS and C2 are placed in conjugated planes with the telescope entrance pupil. Another detector (C1)
was placed at the focal plane of L3 in order to simultaneously measure the focal plane image.

Figure 3: Optical scheme of the Mewlon 300 AO test bench.

In order to isolate the input from the output beam, it was necessary to install a half-wave plate with a
polarized beamsplitter (BS1+1/2WP) to rotate the polarization plane of the previously linearly polarized beam
of light. By rotation of the half-wave plate, one can select the amount of s-polarized light reflected to the
telescope. After the beamsplitter (BS1) a quarter-wave plate (1/4WP) converts the output s-polarized light into
right circularly polarized light, and upon retro-reflection it will be transformed from right to left-handed and
finally converted again by the quarter-wave plate into p-polarized light that will be transmitted by the polarized
beamsplitter (BS1) instead of being reflected onto the source.
The wavefront sensor used was the SHSCAM from Optocraft with a 1.4-Megapixel 8-bit greyscale Photonfocus
sensor, capable of 170 fps at full resolution. The lenslet array is a square pattern of 42x31 lenslet with a pitch
of 248 m . For measuring intensity fluctuations at the pupil of the telescope the camera was used running at
60 fps.

3. EXPERIMENTAL METHODS AND THEORY

For the purpose of this work, Frieds coherence length (r0 ) and refractive index structure parameter (Cn2 ) were
estimated using the Zernike mode variances. Measuring scintillation was also a goal of this work in order to
understand the radial distribution of scintillation in double-passage systems.

3.1 Zernike modes variances

The first 25 Zernike modes2 were recorded with the Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor, every half hour. The
variances of Zernike modes are computed and compared to a theoretical model,3 based on propagation through
Kolmogorov turbulence. Regardless of propagation geometry the variance of any Zernike mode Zn in radial order
n is:
[ 5 + n][ 73 ]
Zn = 1.095(n + 1) 236
[ 6 + n][ 17
6 ]

D
r0

 53
(1)

where Zn is the Zernike mode variance in radians squared, D the diameter of the telescope entrance pupil
and the Gamma function. The Fried parameter r0 is obtained by best fit to experimental data. Furthermore,
the refractive index structure constant Cn2 is computed by assuming spherical propagation:
5

Cn2 = 3 3 (Lk 2 r03 )1

(2)

L being the path length and k the wave number.

3.2 Scintillation index

A laser beam propagated through atmospheric turbulence will be affected by temporal and spatial irradiance
fluctuations commonly referred to as scintillation. One of the most important parameters used to characterize
these irradiance fluctuations is the scintillation index, or normalized variance of intensity, which is defined as4,5
I2 =

hI 2 i
hI 2 i hIi2
=
1
2
hIi
hIi2

where I is the intensity, hI 2 i is the second moment, hIi the mean value and
moment of the irradiance.

(3)
hI 2 i
hIi2

is the second normalized

Scintillation index was computed for an interval of 15 seconds (at 60 fps) individually for each point (pixel) of
the telescope pupil image (Fig. 4). The central obscuration and spider arms were masked. For each scintillation
map three circles (c1 to c3) with increasing diameters, and centers coincident with the center of the pupil were
defined. For each circle 360 points (scintillation values) were selected along the path of the circumference (Fig. 4).
In that way for each increasing diameter we averaged the scintillation index from 360 values (one per degree) all
with the same distance to the center of the pupil.

Figure 4: Scintillation map distribution over the pupil and integrated over 1000 frames with three circles (c1 to c3)
defined on it. Measurements from 5th August 2014 at 8:35 am.

4. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
4.1 Zernike variance fitting
Zernike modes were obtained from the SHWF sensor. Figure 5 shows an example of a scintillation focal plane of
the sensor. Scintillation is one of the main causes of failure of SHWFS in the strong turbulence regime (Fig. 8).

Figure 5: Shack-Hartmann spots recorded on the 5th of August 2014. Scintillation is clearly visible.

For series of 1000 wavefront measurements, the variance of each Zernike mode was computed and compared
with Equation 1. In each instance, the Fried parameter was obtained by comparing 104 theoretical templates
for r0 in the range of 0.5-10 cm to the measured values and choosing the best fit (Fig. 6).

Figure 6: Zernike variances obtained from 1000 wavefronts. Line: theoretical variances for best-fitting r0 (6th August
2014).

Good correspondence between theoretically computed variances and experimentally obtained values allows
for a fairly precise estimation of the Fried parameter. Figure 7 shows the estimated behavior of r0 and Cn2 for
the 6th of August experiment.

Figure 7: Estimated r0 (left) and Cn2 (right) on the August 6th 2014.

It is important to note that for the application of a Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor in horizontal groundlevel turbulence measurements, in contrast to e.g. astronomical adaptive optics, scintillation plays a role. Wavefront reconstruction failed for a significant portion of the measurements (5 to 15%) because of partial obscurations
of the pupil caused by scintillation. Figure 8 show the number of errors for 6th of August. For the purpose of
scintillation resistent wavefront sensing we are developing a new, holography-based sensor.1

Figure 8: Percent of failed wavefront reconstruction measurements due to scintillation.

4.2 Scintillation index

The radial dependence of scintillation has been a topic of extensive research.5 Here, we measured this dependence
to confirm or to show shortcomings of the current theory.

Figure 9: Left: single frame of the telescope pupil for an exposure time of 0.5 ms at 60 fps. Right: map of the intensity
distribution over the pupil integrated over 1000 frames. Measurements from 5th August 2014 at 13:15 pm.

In order to measure intensity fluctuations at the pupil of the telescope the 8-bit Dalsa Genie HM640 camera
was used, with 640x480 pixels running at 60 fps. First, we confirmed the gaussian form of the return beam (Fig. 9).
Secondly, we computed scintillation index for each pixel, over 1000 intensity measurements with exposures times
between 0.3 and 0.5 ms depending on the weather conditions (Fig. 10). These measurements were repeated over
the whole day at 30 minutes intervals.

Figure 10: Left: scintillation map over the telescope pupil computed for 1000 frames. Right: Corresponding 3D plot.
Measurements from 5th of August 2014 at 13:15 pm.

Quite surprisingly, we have measured scintillation decreasing with distance away from the center (Fig. 11).
This effect is barely touched upon in the literature.5 In most cases of interest, scintillation is predicted to be
higher at the edges of the image than at the center. Only in the case of a double-passage system with a very
small target/reflector (point target) does the theory predict scintillation decreasing with off-axis distance. The
functional dependence however has not been developed/published, to our knowledge.

Figure 11: Cross-sections of the scintillation index distribution along two angles: 135 deg and 45 deg respectively.

Another study was performed where for all sets of measurements during one day three different annuli with
increasing diameters were defined over the pupil (Fig. 4) and 360 positions (one per degree) were selected for
each. Scintillation was averaged for each annulus (Fig. 12).

Figure 12: Study of scintillation for three different annuli with increasing diameters vs time. Measurements from 6th of
August 2014.

From the plots one can see that most of the time scintillation is radially decreasing between 5 to 25% from
the center to the boundaries of the telescope pupil.
We also compared Cn2 evolution over time with evolution of the scintillation index. Results show, not surprisingly, correlation between Cn2 and scintillation (Fig. 13).

Figure 13: Comparison between Cn2 and Scintillation index evolution over time. Measurements from 6th August 2014

4.3 Conclusions and outlook

While the Zernike fitting approach does deliver results within the expected range, further verification of the
accuracy of the estimated r0 and Cn2 is necessary. Among other things, the assumption of Kolmogorov turbulence
near the ground has to be investigated.6 Future steps would include long-term monitoring of turbulence over an
urban path as well as correlation analysis with weather conditions.
Concerning the observed decrease of scintillation with off-axis distance, we plan to check the applicability
of the point target hypothesis to our experiment. We also plan to test our setup in a more controllable
environment like a turbulence simulator.7

4.4 Acknowledgments
The authors acknowledge the support of the following project from BAAINBw/WTD91. They are also grateful
to Erik Sucher and Andreas Zepp for their technical support and to Stephanie Wollgarten for data processing
and review of the paper.

REFERENCES
[1] Pablo Marin Palomo, Andreas Zepp and Szymon Gladysz, Characterization of the digital holographic wavefront sensor, Proc. SPIE 9242-69 (2014).
[2] R. J. Noll, Zernike polynomials and atmospheric turbulence, J. Opt. Soc. Am. 66(3) (1976).
[3] R. J. Sasiela, [Electromagnetic wave propagation in turbulence: evaluation and application of Mellin Transforms ], SPIE Press, Bellingham, Washington USA, 2nd ed. (2007).
[4] Young, Cynthia Y. and Andrews, Larry C., Optical scintillation of a gaussian beam in moderate-to-strong
irradiance fluctuations, Proc. SPIE 3706, 142150 (1999).
[5] Larry C. Andrews, Ronald L. Phillips, [Laser Beam Propagation through Random Media ], SPIE Press, Washington USA, 2nd ed. (1995).
[6] T.Nicholls, G.Boreman, J.Dainty, Use of a shackhartmann wave-front sensor to measure deviations from a
kolmogorov phase spectrum, Optics Letters 20, 24602462 (1995).
[7] Mantravadi, Samuel V. and Rhoadarmer, Troy A. and Glas, Robert S., Simple laboratory system for
generating well-controlled atmospheric-like turbulence, Proc. SPIE 5553, 290300 (2004).