Scintillation optimization of radial Gaussian beam array propagating through Kolmogorov turbulence

The analytical expression for scintillation index of radial Gaussian beam array with coherent combination based on Kolmogorov power-law spectrum in the horizontal path is derived. The influences of the beam number and ring radius on the scintillation index are studied. The results show that the scintillation index can be reduced by increasing beam number and an optimum ring radius is proved to exist. Further, the optimum ring radius greatly depends on the source size and exists only in a certain range of the source size determined by the propagating distance. Additionally, the scintillation index distributions at the receiver greatly depend on the source size.