The Effect of a Strongly Inhomogeneous Medium on the Propagation of Light Beams under Multiple Scattering Conditions

Calculations performed by means of a Monte Carlo method show that the contribution of forward single and multiple scattering to the received power in an optical transmission link through a turbid atmosphere increases when the scattering medium is more concentrated near the receiver. In the calculations, based on the semianalytic Monte Carlo procedure used by Poole et al., two simple scaling formulae have been introduced to allow common treatment of cases differing in some geometrical parameters. The formulae can be applied when there are highly peaked scattering functions, as well as to problems in which a small-angle approximation of the scattering problem is not adequate.