Analysis of Rytov variance in free space optical communication under the weak turbulence

Turbulent environment can highly affect the performance of free space optical (FSO) communication links. Therefore, how to obtain the turbulence intensity is a very important issue. The paper has shown the detailed analysis to calculate the log irradiance variance (
σ
²
R
) along with the experimental verification under an indoor laboratory controlled turbulence condition. This paper verifies the consistency of the Rytov variance and the scintillation index under the weak condition based on theoretical and experimental results.