Green Function Inversion for Deep Atmospheric Turbulence Compensation

For applications like tactical laser weapons which involve imaging or transmitting energy via lasers over long paths near the ground, the cumulative atmospheric turbulence effects exceed what conventional adaptive optics technologies can handle. To compensate for moderate to severe deep turbulence effects OPC has developed a new technique called Green’s Function Inversion (GFI). GFI can be used to characterize the transmission path between a high energy laser (HEL) and a target. Once the path is well characterized, the HEL beam can be adjusted to form a very high quality beam at any position. Even very high Greenwood frequencies can be accommodated using a ripple update. It is especially useful with conformal fiber laser arrays as a HEL source. During Phase I, we will perform a detailed wave-optic simulation of the GFI technique to demonstrate its performance under AF engagement conditions, with the sample scenario as a starting point. The ability to generate a target image suitable for aimpoint selection and maintenance will be shown and the ability to place a high quality hit spot on the designated aimpoint evaluated including point ahead offsets. Finally, a prototype flight design will be generated and a lab experiment laid out for Phase II.