Real-time Atmospheric Vapor Image Compensation for Infrared Scenes

To address the Missile Defense Agency"s (MDA"s) need for real-time correction of water vapor effects in infrared scenes, Physical Optics Corporation (POC) proposes to develop new Atmospheric Vapor Image Compensation (AVIC) software. It is based on a fast 3D sparse matrix solver implementing finite difference implicit image restoration. The innovation in fast finite difference computation for image restoration and integration of multiple commercial off-the-shelf graphical processing unit processors will enable the AVIC software to solve unsymmetric sparse linear systems in sensor images observed through space-variant, turbulent media. As a result, this software offers real-time correction of water vapor effects, efficient usage of the central processing unit and memory, incoherent light source correction, and flexible computing resource allocation, which directly address the MDA requirements. In Phase I, POC will demonstrate the feasibility of AVIC by developing its atmospheric effect models in all physical layers of the atmosphere, developing water vapor correction algorithms, and demonstrating the effectiveness of its models and algorithms for star calibration. In Phase II, we plan to mature the AVIC software and demonstrate its performance on models of interest to MDA. Their performance will be characterized on modern hardware, and accuracy will be assessed on realistic models.