Open-Air Range Scattered Laser Light Detectors

The proposed effort will develop a system architecture for providing an "optical fence" around a test range to monitor potentially hazardous stray reflections from open air high energy laser tests. The system will detect aerosol scattered radiation from the stray radiation, identify the beam's direction, and estimate its power level. Calculations in the proposal prove the feasibility of exploiting this observable, for both day and night operations. The proposed effort will lead to an optimized design for the test range monitoring problem and a prototype device will be fabricated and operated at a test of opportunity. This test will be used to validate the observables predictions as well as the sensor performance. An overall architecture including concept of operations, approaches for remote sensor operation and data handling, and processing requirements will be defined.