TOTAL INFORMATION ANALYSIS

Sunday, March 11, 2007

MZA's WaveTrain graphical user interface makes it easy to adjust shooting energy beams through the stratosphere and lower atmosphere:



More about WaveTrain:

WaveTrain Atmospheric Path Configuration Guide
[...]
The WaveTrain Turbulence Distribution Toolbox (turbtool) is a Matlab Graphical User Interface (GUI) that assists the WaveTrain user in constructing turbulence propagation modeling parameters. With turbtool, the user can construct a turbulence specification and store it to a disk file for later input to an WaveTrain run.

The basic function of turbtool is to allow the user to specify the geometry and characteristics of a series of phase screens through which wave-optics propagations are to be performed. The following are some of the capabilities of the turbtool:



turbtool can set up phase screen geometries based on either a spherical-earth or flat-earth model.



turbtool allows the user to specify and/or generate a variety of phase screen parameters including: distance between screens, height of screens, strength of screens, inner and outer scale lengths, and velocities (for modeling wind and relative motion between the platform and target).



turbtool provides a variety of turbulence models including constant turbulence, Clear-1 Night, Clear-2 Night, AMOS Night, AMOS Day, Hufnagel-Valley 5/7, and Maui. The user can also modify these models to weight the turbulence path in an arbitrary fashion.



turbtool provides a variety of wind speed models including constant wind speed, wind speed due to a slew, Osan January, SOR Fall, SOR Spring, SOR Summer, SOR Winter, WSMR, Bufton, and Clear-2. . .



turbtool provides a variety of diagnostics including the computation of r0 and theta0 for a given scenario and the generation of plots of the turbulence distribution and turbulence profiles.

And from the Albuquerque-based MZA Associates' homepage MZA.com:

"MZA Associates Corporation reaches the 15-year mark

MZA was incorporated in October 1991 to meet a need for advanced simulation and analysis of adaptive optics systems at what is now the Air Force Research Laboratory t(AFRL). Because of the ongoing reduction in SDI-related research, the business climate called for a leaner approach to providing such support and created an opportunity for the formation of MZA. In December of 1992, MZA was awarded a four-year, three-million dollar simulation and analysis support contrac (AMASS).

The company has been growing and thriving ever since. In the past 15 years, MZA played a key role in the completion of AFRL's landmark ABLEX and ABLE ACE high-altitude atmospheric characterization experiments. We developed data acquisition and optical systems to help build the ABL-ACT facilities on White Sands Missile Range and provided significant simulation and data analysis for the subsequent experiments. We wrote WaveTrain and distributed it to more than one hundred organizations, significantly increasing the number of scientists that perform wave-optics analysis of advanced optical systems.

For the past six years, MZA has played a major role in the performance prediction and assessment of the Airborne Laser (ABL) for the ABL SPO. Concurrently, we invented, built, and patented the Adaptive Dynamic Range Wave Front Sensor (ADRWFS). We are also proud of the fact that MZA has been named to the New Mexico Technology Flying Forty for these last six years running.

We continue to provide simulation and analysis to AFRL for ABL, tactical, relays, and ground-based optical systems. MZA's ABL WaveTrain-based wave-optics model is currently being used to predict and analyze the performance of the ABL which is currently undergoing early flight tests of its beam control system. In 2005, we established our Dayton, Ohio office and inherited an impressive legacy of scaling codes. We also created a subsidiary, Active Optical Systems (AOS), which manufactures low-cost, compact adaptive optics hardware. On-going projects include R&D in the areas of optical propagation in the marine environment, wave-optics modeling of laser resonators, adaptive reconstructors for the compensation of aero-optical effects, laser weapon lethality, complex synthetic scene generation, relay mirrors, and isomorphic modeling of complex systems. (December 2006)
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• The infamous SAIC has also helped out in the development WaveTrain software

  Labels: directed-energy, los alamos

| Posted at 14:07 | PERMA-LINK |

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