Modeling of laser transmission in the atmosphere for virtual test

During the transmission in the atmosphere, the laser is affected by several atmospheric factors, and thereby, the laser devices vary greatly in the performance under different weather conditions. Currently, the virtual tests are more likely adopted to test the laser device’s performances under various weather conditions. The laser transmission model in the atmosphere is a crucial factor in establishing these virtual testing systems. This article aims to construct the laser transmission model for satisfying the requirements in virtual tests. Specifically, in order to cover all weather types, the transmission media were classified into two types?the low- and intermediate-scattering media and the high-scattering media, respectively. The corresponding models, the first-scattering-based transmission model and the Gaussian-distribution-based transmission model were proposed, respectively. By comparing the results using the proposed model with the results using the classical MC model, the proposed model is comparable with the MC model in terms of accuracy but is preferable in terms of calculation efficiency, i.e., the proposed model is more applicable to the real-time calculations in virtual tests.