Methodologies for Accurate Scene Generation of Target Characteristics as Seen by an Airborne Platform through Dynamic Atmospheric Conditions

The purpose of the proposed Phase I research is to develop and implement tools to model the effects of the atmosphere on synthetically generated IR scenes to be used in ballistic missile defense system assessment.These effects include scattering, absorption and emission due to gases and aerosols, optical aberration and scintillation due to near- and far-field clear air turbulence and displacement of the apparent target location due to large scale gradients in the atmospheric index of refraction. These phenomena have signi cant effects on imagery used in BMDS target detection, recognition and tracking and must be accurately modeled in order to support system hardware and software design and evaluation. In the accompanying document we propose the coupling of existing codes (MODTRAN for example) with codes to be adapted from other uses ( refraction modeling and optical turbulence modeling) to model the full suite of atmospheric effects on BMDS IR imagery. We further propose to develop and implement a proof of concept star background model to support calibration of synthetic scene generation capabilities. This model will rely on existing celestial ephemeris data and software as well as publicly available stellar spectral flux data.