Abstract
The variance in intensity of a laser beam propagating through a turbulent medium increases with the off-axis beam angle. Measurements of this dependence for an uplink qualitatively agreed with theory. The intensity variance with on-axis transmission, derived from the off-axis beam angle dependence of the intensity fluctuation in multiple laser beam transmission with a separated aperture (multi-beam), was lower than that with parallel transmission. Examination of the effect of multi-beam transmission considering the beam pointing error showed that the mean intensity with two-beam uplink transmission was about six times that with singlebeam transmission at a specified intensity variance.
