Abstract

A three-point joint density function for the intensity of a partially developed laser speckle pattern is derived as an infinite summation of products of modified Bessel functions of the first kind. From this, a simpler expression for the corresponding density function of a fully developed (Gaussian) speckle pattern is developed. The results will be useful in obtaining the conditional density function of intensity for general optical scattering problems and to estimate the probability of error in signal to noise ratio calculations in optical systems such as optical radar.

© 1991 Optical Society of America