Intensity fluctuations of spherical acoustic waves propagating through thermal turbulence*

The intensity fluctuations of acoustic waves that propagate through thermal turbulence are investigated under well controlled laboratory conditions. Two heated grids in air are placed horizontally in a large anechoic room and the mixing of the free convection plumes above them generates a homogeneous isotropic random thermal field. The spectrum of refractive index fluctuations is accurately described by a modified von Karman model which takes into account the entire spectrum of turbulence. Experimental data are obtained by varying both the frequency of the spherical wave and the distance of propagation. In this paper we concentrate on the variance of the normalized intensity fluctuations and on their probability distributions. These measurements cover all the regimes from weak scattering to strong scattering including the peak of the intensity variance. Experimental values of the scintillation index are compared with classical theoretical predictions and also with the results of recent numerical simulations. The classical probability density functions (log-normal, exponential, I-K) are tested against the measured probability distributions. The generalized gamma distribution, which varies smoothly from log-normal to exponential as a function of two parameters, appears m represent the experimental data for a very large range of scattering conditions.