Atmospheric turbulence MTF for infrared optical waves’ propagation through marine atmospheric turbulence

• Marine turbulence MTF is derived.
• Turbulence inner and outer scales are considered.
• Marine turbulence produces more effects than the terrestrial case.

Infrared optical wave’s propagation in marine environment is particularly challenging, not only for scattering and absorption due to high humidity, but also for a different behavior of atmospheric turbulence with respect to terrestrial propagation. In this paper, the marine atmospheric turbulence modulation transfer functions (MTF), which describes the degrading effects of marine atmospheric turbulence on an optical imaging system, is investigated in detail both analytically and numerically. New analytic expressions of the MTF are derived for plane and spherical waves under marine atmospheric turbulence, and they consider physically the influences of finite turbulence inner and outer scales. The final results indicate that, the marine atmospheric turbulence brings more degrading effects on the imaging system than the terrestrial atmospheric turbulence.