Evaluating sparse aperture imaging performance: simulation and experiment

Joshua Snyder; Christopher Bailey; Steven Zuraski

doi:10.1117/12.2677525

3 October 2023 Evaluating sparse aperture imaging performance: simulation and experiment

Joshua Snyder, Christopher Bailey, Steven Zuraski

Proceedings Volume 12693, Unconventional Imaging, Sensing, and Adaptive Optics 2023; 1269303 (2023) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2677525
Event: SPIE Optical Engineering + Applications, 2023, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

Sparse apertures can greatly improve the size, weight, power and cost (SWaP-C) in comparison to larger multi-meter diameter monolithic apertures for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) applications. However, their system design is more complex and requires careful optimization of the aperture configuration. The Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) has developed a simulation toolkit that allows for rapid prototyping of sparse aperture designs to evaluate their optical performance that assists in concept design development. The toolkit is based upon a novel formalism that combines imaging and interferometry principles within the quasi-monochromatic approximation to build a complex synthetic pupil function containing all the sub-pupil phase information. Defining the sub-pupil phase information is customizable with user-defined low order Zernike’s (i.e. piston and tilt) or by importing higher order Zernike’s from commercial interferometric optical test results. This toolkit has been validated using a two-aperture sparse aperture testbed that is constructed completely from commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components and is reconfigurable. In addition we have evaluated the performance of a six-aperture interferometric imaging array developed by HartSCI. With these recent advances in testing and modeling capabilities, AFRL hopes to investigate opportunities for sparse aperture technologies that integrate into the modern ISR domain.

Conference Presentation

(2023) Published by SPIE. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

Citation Download Citation

Joshua Snyder, Christopher Bailey, and Steven Zuraski "Evaluating sparse aperture imaging performance: simulation and experiment", Proc. SPIE 12693, Unconventional Imaging, Sensing, and Adaptive Optics 2023, 1269303 (3 October 2023); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2677525

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