Statistical characteristics of the laser speckle structures registered in a focal plane of receiving objective

To locate actively geodesic satellites stationed on the low Earth orbits lasers are often used via illumination of the satellites and detection of the laser reflected radiation. But, the lasers can strongly affect electronic devices of the satellites because of scattering of the laser radiation inside its optical systems. To exclude the influence of laser radiation on operating capabilities of the satellites, the characteristic properties of scattered laser radiation in a plane of receiver optical systems are studied in the paper. It is known that scattered laser radiation fields have a speckled character and registered speckles depend on both the laser and photo detector array spectral and power characteristics. In the paper, the laser radiation recorded experimentally in a focal plane of optical system by using photo detector array is investigated at various conditions of the array illumination. Theoretical analysis of the speckles is carried out to determine such characteristics of speckled images as dispersion and covariance and its dependence on the illumination conditions.