Hypersonic Real-Time Digital Holography Pipeline

Hypersonic air vehicles are being developed for a variety of military applications because of their global reach and rapid response. EO/IR sensors on these platforms need to provide high-quality imagery to support these missions. Similarly, laser directed energy (DE) systems need to stabilize the beam and compensate for wavefront aberrations at high frame rates. When viewing through optical windows in hypersonic flight, these sensors will be looking through shocks, inviscid flow features, turbulent boundary layers, aero-heated windows, and window deformations due to aerodynamic loading. When imaging targets at long distance, atmosphere turbulence, scattering, and refractive propagation will further degrade sensor imaging. Digital holography (DH) is a rapidly emerging technology that can meet requirements for wavefront sensing on hypersonic platforms in a practical way. MZA Associates Corporation proposes to select a DH processing algorithm, accelerate it, deploy it onto a high-speed processor system, and validate its operation with relevant simulated and experimental wavefront data.