The influence of atmospheric turbulence-induced optical intensity scintillation on the accuracy of satellite-to-ground laser one-way timing

Abstract

This paper elucidates the mechanism by which atmospheric turbulence leads to errors in satellite-to-ground laser one-way timing, investigates the influence of optical intensity scintillation on the time delay jitter of laser signal arrival in single-satellite-to-ground transmission link. Furthermore, the impact patterns and the magnitude of atmospheric turbulence-induced one-way timing errors and positioning errors across various gradients of observation zenith angles in the GPS four-satellite-to-ground transmission link is also investigated. Besides, the study also explores the impact patterns and magnitude ranges of the effects of optical intensity scintillation on the four-satellite-to-ground time transfer system under different observed zenith angles with similar geometric dilution of precision (GDOP) conditions. The results show that smaller receiver zenith angles result in reduced errors caused by atmospheric turbulence-induced optical intensity scintillation, leading to higher accuracy in four-satellite positioning. When the GDOP factors range from 6.5 to 7.5, the timing errors for multiple sets of satellites consistently exhibit a normal distribution. Specifically, the four-satellite-to-ground laser one-way time transfer deviation averages around 2 ns, with jitter remaining within 1 ns.