Atmospheric and platform jitter effects on laser acquisition patterns

Several applications exist that require the acquisition of a distant target by illuminating it with a laser source, either cooperatively or non-cooperatively. Because of the uncertainties that exist in the knowledge of the target's position as well as the transmitting vehicles attitude, this acquisition process often involves scanning a laser beam over some uncertainty cone. The parameters of this scan can be adjusted to provide an acceptable intensity pattern within the uncertainty region. However, disturbances in the form of uncompensated platform jitter, atmospheric scintillation, and aero-optical effects due to boundary layer turbulence (if the transmitting terminal is located on a moving platform) combine to distort the desired pattern in the far field. A detailed simulation of the first two of these processes is developed and used as the basis for a trade study to show how to optimize the search parameters and maximize the probability of detection for a given set of disturbance inputs