Scintillation Effects on Plane and Spherical Waves in Oceanic Turbulence from Weak to Strong Regimes

The study of turbulence regimes, ranging from weak to strong, is essential for analyzing irradiance fluctuations of both plane and spherical wavefronts in an oceanic medium. In this work, the Rytov perturbation approximation and its modified form are employed to characterize these fluctuations. Closed-form expressions for the Rytov variance (RV) are derived for plane and spherical wavefronts propagating through underwater turbulence. The computed RV is then used to evaluate the scintillation index (SI), which quantifies intensity variations induced by optical turbulence. Furthermore, the variation of the SI is investigated under different turbulence conditions, considering key oceanic parameters such as wavelength, temperature dissipation rate, kinetic energy dissipation rate per unit mass of fluid, and propagation path length.