Scintillation distribution functions in a marine environment

Optical propagation in a marine environment is important to understand for many applications. In this work we compare measurements of the distribution function to simulation. Measurements were conducted on the Naval Research Laboratory's Chesapeake Bay Lasercom Testbed. The experimental data is compared to wave optics simulations, which also produces a distribution function. The dependence of the distribution function on turbulence and aperture size is studied.