In-Situ Atmospheric Path Characterization and Performance Forecasting

EO Solutions in partnership with the Center for Directed Energy at the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) will demonstrate through modeling and simulation the concepts of using meteorological data and forecasting along with optical measurements to demonstrate the ability to forecast the optical seeing parameters predicting statistical turbulence on a longer time basis, and the actual turbulence-induced phase on a short time basis.  We seek to bridge the gap between meteorological forecasting and atmospheric optics to provide a fieldable capability to both measure and predict turbulence strength on short time scales and develop the means to use this information in beam control systems. We will develop a simple to use hardware/software system enabled by machine learning algorithms to measure and predict turbulence strength and perhaps even the turbulence-induced phase error over short time scales turbulence parameters with high temporal resolution.  The primary technical objectives are:  (1) to develop and provide to the customer a design for a highly accurate and reliable sensing system for characterizing atmospheric propagation paths near a target of interest with high temporal resolution; (2) evaluate the performance of this system using existing simulation tools and use the results of the simulation to optimize the design; (3) develop, test, and evaluate in simulation a machine learning-based algorithm to predict the turbulence parameters using measured data at least one second forward in time from the measurement; (4) integrate outputs from the AFIT meteorological forecasting software into the machine learning algorithm in simulation do develop a methodology for using forecast data to inform the algorithms; (5) use the modeling and simulation results to develop a complete opto-mechanical design of the optical equipment, data acquisition and processing electronics, and the user software interface.  The ultimate goal is to develop a system capable of measuring and predicting the Cn2 profiled along the path with high accuracy and spatial/temporal resolution, with a very simple hardware and software system. However, it is possible that this STTR is motivated by the complexity and lack of accuracy and timeliness of existing solutions. It is unlikely that this level of fidelity is needed to update the controllers for beam control and adaptive optics systems anyway, as these systems are governed by spatial moments of the turbulence profile, such as the Fried parameter, the isoplanatic angle, and the variance of the log-amplitude fluctuations.