Statistical analysis of Airborne Aero-Optical Laboratory optical wavefront measurements

Abstract

The Airborne Aero-Optical Laboratory has produced a large database of aero-optical measurements with a high-speed, high-resolution Shack Hartmann wavefront sensor. The data have been collected over a wide range of flight conditions. An analysis of the statistical characteristics of the subsonic and early transonic data is performed to assess the adequacy of the spatial and temporal resolution of the data. Sample rate requirements for a minimum variance phase estimator are also explored. The techniques employed are validated by application to measurements of optical atmospheric turbulence where results can be anticipated based on established Kolmogorov statistics.