Research Summaries

Back Maritime Beam Control and Redundant Spacings Calibration (RSC)

Fiscal Year 2009
Division Graduate School of Engineering & Applied Science
Department Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering
Investigator(s) Agrawal, Jr., Brij N.
Sponsor Office of Naval Research (Navy)
Summary To develop an improved wavefront sensor based on Redundant Spacings Calibration (RSC) for the purpose of compensating for atmospherically-induced beam-wander of a HEL system in maritime environment and to allow amalgamation of wavefront sensing and target tracking apparatus and the elimination of a beacon laser. The RSC technique had previously been established for the calibration of piston phase errors only, affecting interferometric arrays. Here we propose to extend the analysis to allow calibration of higher order phase modes. By selectively sampling repeated (or redundant) spatial frequency components of the object light the aberration phase component can be separated from the object information. This should eliminate the need for a reference laser, with measurements being made from the image itself, and may also permit the combination of the wavefront sensing detector with imaging and aim point maintenance apparatus. Improvements are expected in dynamic range and speed of wavefront solution over other popular sensors. This wavefront sensing technique has many potential applications. We are currently investigating it for the phasing of segmented telescopes, but it can also apply to the calibration of phased arrays under atmospheric turbulence conditions.
Keywords
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Data Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal