Simulation of Extended Scene Imaging through Turbulence

The complexity of simulating electro-magnetic propagation through turbulence often requires sophisticated techniques both in the use of proper physics models and in the numerical implementation in simulations. Incoherent imaging of extended targets is one problem which is not reasonably solved with standard techniques. At some levels this problem is completely intractable. An approach is developed which reduces the computational requirements by a factor of 20 over conventional techniques. Several other technical problems related to wave optics simulation are addressed as well. These include 3D dynamic modeling of targets, thermal blooming, simulation of long time sequences, proper representation of turbulence statistics, advanced image processing techniques, and integration of physical and geometric optics propagation models. These solutions will all be integrated along with proven wave optics propagation techniques in an object-oriented modeling tool that is easy to use, efficient, and extensible.