FRAMES-EMSIG: Missile Plume Interpolation and Rendering Software for Simulating Low-Altitude Threats in Real-Time

The performance of early warning and missile defense optical sensors and their associated detection and tracking algorithms can be robustly evaluated using hardware-in-the-loop (HWIL) testing technology.This requires high-frame rate (~400 Hz) simulated imagery of the highly dynamic threat missile system.There is a need for an engineering-level method to provide on-demand, real-time, realistic plume imagery to the HWIL scene generator.Spectral Sciences, Inc. and Kinetics, Inc. propose to extend an existing high-altitude plume flow filed morphing and real-time plume imaging system, the Fast Rendering Algorithm for Missile Emission Scenes (FRAMES) to apply to low altitude missile systems.The key idea in the FRAMES approach is that one interpolates between pre-computed flow fields, and then generates an image based on the interpolated flow field, rather than interpolating between pre-computed images. This project focuses on morphological interpolation ofthe low-altitude Enhanced Missile Signature (E-MSIG) plume flow field database, and rendering high-frame rate imagery using the GPU-based SPIDER radiative transfer code. In Phase I we will develop and demonstrate the FRAMES-EMSIG algorithms necessary to generate missile plume signatures targeting a 50 Hz frame rate for a representative threat system.