Photon-counting Enhanced Sensor System (PhESS)

In this effort, the Optical Sciences Company (tOSC) and Raytheon Vision Systems (RVS) have teamed to provide a revolutionary sensor system that can project laser light and detect even single photons returning from distant ballistic missile targets, in order to perform active tracking 0.0on the missile.Ultimately, we will build an innovative fiber-optics-based laser system as a phased array tracking system, and sense the returning light with photon counting technology built on previous MDA contracts in the Advanced Detectors (ADet) and Ultra-Sensitive Detectors (USD) programs.The tOSC-Raytheon team will expand on our existing analysis and wave optics simulation tools to trade the various wavelengths of interest to MDA (Visible, Near-Infrared (NIR), Midwave-IR (MWIR), Long-Wave IR (LWIR)) and present a critical system design by the end of the phase II effort.We will also investigate producing a laboratory emulation of the system, including appropriate long range attenuation parameters. Some hardware will be tested in phase II as a precursor to the laboratory testbed in any event. Field tests of the Photon-counting Enhanced Sensor System (PhESS) would occur in phase III after we generate all the hardware that meets the system design.