High Speed Sensor Model: Aero-Optical Prediction Tool

The need for a tool to model the environmental effects on electro-optical infrared seekers in high speed munitions has been highlighted by the Air Force Research Laboratory. These effects can include scattering, absorption, and turbulence due to the quiescent atmosphere; turbulence and boresight error induced by the aerodynamic flow around the weapon, heating and deformation of the seeker window; and smearing of the scene due to jitter and forward motion of the motion. IERUS Technologies has developed Aero-Optical Prediction Tool (AerOPT) to model the impacts of these effects. In addition, AerOPT contains an empirical sensor model that can assess the impacts of optical aberrations, diffraction, and a variety of sensor noise sources. AerOPT covers long wave infrared (LWIR) through ultraviolet spectral regions. AerOPT has been developed in MATLAB, and with portions recently converted from legacy FORTRAN code. IERUS will mature the current engineering code to a product that can be released to external users, including documentation and training. The tool will support both high-fidelity modeling and real-time hardware in the loop systems.