Fast Synthetic Scene Generation for Directed Energy Applications

Some of the analysis and computer simulation tools used to evaluate directed energy target tracking systems must have the capability to generate realistic simulated target and background imagery. The images are often degraded by atmospheric turbulence or other phenomena. For many wave optics simulations, the calculations required to effect the transformation from the target reflectance to the distorted and blurred image as seen by the track sensor dominate the simulation run time. MZA proposes to evaluate three different techniques that hold promise for speeding up generation of synthetic target and background scenes. The first will use an analytic model developed for another project that can rapidly generate the required images. The model needs to be better characterized and optimized. The second will evaluate replacing the interpolation done in the MZA lighttunnel algorithm with optimal estimates to reduce the total number of wave optics propagations required. The third technique, cross section averaging, will pre-compute the tilts introduced by each turbulence screen in a wave optics simulation. This approach may offer dramatic improvements in computational efficiency. The evaluations will rely heavily on the MZA WaveTrain wave optics computer simulation.