The Rough Evaporation Duct Experiment (RED) assessed the effects of the air-sea boundary layer on microwave and infrared (IR) signal propagation near the sea surface. The experiment was designed around the Floating Instrument Platform (FLIP) research platform, which was moored 10 kilometers off the northeast shore of Oahu, Hawaii. A 10-kilometer infrared propagation path was created from FLIP to a shore-based receiver and both scintillation and transmission measurements were made around the clock for a two-week period. An accurate model for the propagation of infrared signals in the marine atmospheric surface layer remains an elusive goal. Within the first tens of meters of elevation above the sea surface there are substantial vertical gradients of mass and temperature, and this has a strong effect on the prediction of extinction of the infrared signal. The effectiveness of the propagation models will be investigated and the results from the infrared signal propagation study during RED will be shown.

Date Published: 20 March 2003
PDF: 11 pages
Proc. SPIE 4884, Optics in Atmospheric Propagation and Adaptive Systems V, (20 March 2003); doi: 10.1117/12.462457

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 4884:
Optics in Atmospheric Propagation and Adaptive Systems V
Anton Kohnle; John D. Gonglewski, Editor(s)