Date of Award

3-2007

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

First Advisor

Stephen C. Cain, PhD

Abstract

This dissertation documents three new contributions to simulation and modeling of optical turbulence. The first contribution is the formalization, optimization, and validation of a modeling technique called successively conditioned rendering (SCR). The SCR technique is empirically validated by comparing the statistical error of random phase screens generated with the technique. The second contribution is the derivation of the covariance delineation theorem, which provides theoretical bounds on the error associated with SCR. It is shown empirically that the theoretical bound may be used to predict relative algorithm performance. Therefore, the covariance delineation theorem is a powerful tool for optimizing SCR algorithms. For the third contribution, we introduce a new method for passively estimating optical turbulence parameters, and demonstrate the method using experimental data.

AFIT Designator

AFIT-DS-ENG-07-04

DTIC Accession Number

ADA464766

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