Measuring Optical Turbulence using a Laser DIMM in support of characterization of imaging system performance

摘要

The MITA (Motion Imagery Task Analyzer) project was conceived by CBP OA (Customs and Border Protection- Offce of Acquisition) and executed by JHU/APL (Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory) andC5ISR Center NVESD (Command, Control, Computers, Communications, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance, andReconnaissance Center Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate). The intent is to develop an effcientmethodology to characterize imaging system performance objectively, in a field setting, using a target resolutionboard and simultaneously measuring the turbulence along the camera line of sight. The initial design, develop-ment, and testing of MITA was previously reported (Hixson et al) and an additional set of field measurementsand subsequent modeling results are reported here. The initial MITA design uses a transmitter at the imagingsystem location and a DIMM receiver in the field with the resolution target to measure the path turbulence, soa strong understanding of the path-averaged turbulence reciprocity is needed for proper implementation of theMITA system. To this end, a test series was conducted to explore the reciprocity of path averaged optical tur-bulence measurements using two scintillometers and the laser DIMM receiver in both bi-static and mono-staticconfigurations. Finally, the path averaged measurements are compared with modeled turbulence along the pathbased off of the available meteorological data.