The effects of atmospheric turbulence on millimeter wave propagation are not as well understood as the corresponding effects on optical propagation, generally because of the strong dependence of turbulence effects on the absolute humidity structure parameter C_Q² (as opposed to just the temperature structure parameter C_T² and the cross-correlation C_TQ) in this frequency range. Scattered results at 35, 94, 140, and 220 GHz are available, but in almost all cases, available atmospheric data are inadequate, generally because turbulence measurements were obtained incidental to other propagation experiments. This paper attempts to compare available results to theory, and shows that agreement in most cases is plausible. An experiment designed to characterize millimeter wave turbulence at several frequencies of interest, while at the same time determining values of appropriate atmospheric parameters, will be discussed. Included in the planned investigation are measurements of the mutual coherence function showing angle-of-arrival effects and intensity fluctuations.

Date Published: 22 October 1982
PDF: 10 pages
Proc. SPIE 0337, Millimeter Wave Technology I, (22 October 1982); doi: 10.1117/12.965930

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 0337:
Millimeter Wave Technology I
William E. Keicher; Ronald R. Parenti, Editor(s)