Comparison of refractive index structure constants of atmospheric turbulence deduced from scintillation and beam wander effects

Scintillation effect of divergent laser beam and beam wander effect of a focused laser beam were experimentally used to deduce the refractive index structure constant in atmospheric boundary layer over 1 km path above sea level. Different measurement results of two methods are observed. Theoretical analyses reveal that the reasons for the difference between these two methods as follows: (1)Scintillation is most sensitive to small scale eddies in the centre of the path, however, for beam wander the most sensitive eddies are large scaled and near the transmitter; (2)With the increase of the inner scale from 0 to 20 mm, values of the refractive index structure constant deduced from beam wander effect are larger than that from scintillation. The biggest difference is 3 times when the inner sca