The effect of random phase variation of turbulence on image resolution

Author

Park, Kinam ; Poularikas, A.D.

Author_Institution

Electr. & Comput. Eng. Dept., Alabama Univ., Huntsville, AL, USA

fYear

1993

fDate

7-9 Mar 1993

Firstpage

174

Lastpage

178

Abstract

The turbulence produced by the shearing process between the cooling gas and atmosphere of a hypersonically moving vehicle, which contributes to the image degradation, is addressed. Based on the random phase variation of the optical wavefront, the modulation transfer function (MTF) can be specified to characterize the effect of turbulence on the image resolution. The use of computer simulation to generate the random phase variation and variance and the corresponding MTF is reported. Different types of phase variation are investigated. The MTF for each case is used to find the effect on image degradation and resolution. The effect of the nonuniform turbulence intensity across the optical window is also investigated and compared with results for the uniform case

Keywords

aberrations; aerospace simulation; atmospheric turbulence; image resolution; optical transfer function; variational techniques; computer simulation; hypersonically moving vehicle; image degradation; image resolution; modulation transfer function; nonuniform turbulence intensity; optical window; random phase variation; shearing; variance; Atmosphere; Computer simulation; Cooling; Degradation; Image resolution; Optical modulation; Phase modulation; Shearing; Transfer functions; Vehicles;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

System Theory, 1993. Proceedings SSST '93., Twenty-Fifth Southeastern Symposium on

Conference_Location

Tuscaloosa, AL

ISSN

0094-2898

Print_ISBN

0-8186-3560-6

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/SSST.1993.522765

Filename

522765