Vol. 47, Issue 1, pp. 63-74 (2017)

Abstract

Experimental results and empirical research have shown that atmospheric turbulence can present the anisotropic property not only at a few meters above the ground but also at high altitudes of up to several kilometers. This paper investigates beam spreading for a Gaussian wave propagating along a horizontal path in weak anisotropic non-Kolmogorov turbulence. Mathematical expressions for the long-term beam spreading radius were obtained based on the generalized von Kármán spectrum for anisotropic turbulence. The final model includes an anisotropic factor, which parameterizes the asymmetry of a turbulence cell, the spectral power law for non-Kolmogorov turbulence, the inner and outer scale of turbulence, and other essential optical parameters of a Gaussian wave. Numerical simulations indicate that the long-term beam spreading radius decreases with an increase in the anisotropic factor. We also analyze how the geometrical optics approximation may cause large errors for a small spectral power law value.