Atmospheric turbulence is an important factor affecting the transmission performance of
free-space optical communications (FSOC), especially in the
near-surface where the atmospheric turbulence characteristics are
complex and variable. In this paper, we study the real-time
measurement technique of a near-surface atmospheric turbulence profile
of an airship-borne laser communication system based on the principle
of light intensity scintillation. Aiming at the influence of an
avalanche photon diode detector system noise and environmental factors
such as background light and platform vibration on the measurement
results, a noise-canceling scintillation index calculation method,
combined with a wavelet threshold denoising method, is proposed to
improve the accuracy of atmospheric turbulence profile measurements.
We build a communication distance of a 12 km airship-borne laser
communication experiment and carry out a real-time measurement of
turbulence profile under 1 km near the ground without affecting the
laser communication rate of 2.5 Gbps data transmission. The
experimental results show that the atmospheric turbulence profile
measured in real time follows the same trend as the theoretical
simulation curve of the Hufnagel–Valley model, and the jitter of the
measured values after denoising is significantly smaller than that of
the measured values without denoising. The research results provide
technical guidance and data support to promote the development of
space laser communication and adaptive optics.