Improved Analysis Techniques for Characterizing Jitter in Beam Control Systems

This SBIR will define test and analysis approaches to unambiguously identify cause/effect relationships for jitter in HEL beam control systems. In particular, from existing test data, we will seek to determine if jitter on target is due to sensor noise (If so, what sensor?), or acoustic inputs to the bench (if so, what are its characteristics?), or induced by structural vibrations (If so, what is their origin?). If additional test procedures are required, they will be recommended. To achieve the objective we will use a variety of conventional and advanced data analysis techniques. Conventional techniques include coherence analysis and modern estimation theory. Advanced techniques include sophisticated spectral analysis and blind source separation methods. BENEFIT: Successfully demonstrated techniques for jitter analysis in HEL beam control systems will garner wide scale acceptance and use in the laser community, since this effort addresses a serious perennial problem in the beam control community.  In particular, current beam control systems, e.g. ABL, HELLADS, OTHEELA, ATL, and ELLA, would all benefit in that better jitter analysis methods would lead to better jitter identification and mitigation which would directly contribute to better performance for HEL weapons.