Development of an Adaptive Optics Processor for Real Time Adaptive Processing of Wavefront Sensor Data

The proposed effort utilizes the experience gained from over 20 years of work performed by the Optical Sciences Company in the areas of atmospheric propagation, wavefront sensing and adaptive optics technology to develop real time adaptive signalprocessors for on-line performance optimization of adaptive optical systems. In addition to building upon the technology developed for the GEN III NOP adaptive optics system to implement the adaptive control law, an enhanced estimation algorithm isutilized. Unlike conventional systems which predict the future wavefront, the proposed effort predicts the subaperture slopes that are required. As a consequence, nonlinear wavefront reconstructors, such as branch cut reconstructors, can be used in astraight forward manner in a strong scintillation environment. The proposed processor operates at just under 5000 frames per second eclipsing the stated requirement by almost a factor of five. This is a key feature of the proposed effort that ensuresthat a high level of performance will be available.