R1:101: Research 1, Room 101

Title: Eyes on the Sky, Nowhere to Hide: Challenges in Full Sky Space Domain Awareness and Communications

Abstract: When satellites are lower than thirty degrees above the horizon, the non-negligible path length through the atmosphere exceeds 100 km. Operations in this regime are sometimes referred to as being "in the soup" because turbulence effects dominate both seeing and optical communications. Seeing conditions here are dominated by volume effects and loss of spatial coherence, while laser beam propagation enters the "deep" turbulence regime. Both cases operate at or beyond the margins of established theory. Additionally, whether operating on ground or in space, size, weight, and power (SWaP) restrictions are often chief concerns.

In this talk, I address the problem of imaging space objects at low elevation angles via a combination of spatial and angular partitioning of the aperture. I demonstrate that in extreme anisoplanatic imaging conditions, overlapping angular viewpoint images allow snapshot light-field scene recovery and atmospheric tomography. I will also discuss how the atmosphere impacts coherent synthetic aperture imaging techniques from the ground. The performance of both techniques depends on the atmospheric outer scale size and models thereof. This outer scale also figures prominently in understanding discrepancies between theories, measurements, and simulation of optical scintillation caused by the atmosphere. Finally, I will show how modular aperture designs may allow for conformal geometries, as well as reduced SWaP and increased robustness in both ground and space based communications.

About the Speaker: Jeremy Bos is an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Michigan Technological University. Before joining Michigan Tech, Bos worked as a NRC Postdoctoral Fellow under the Research Associateship Program with the US Air Force Research Lab in Kihei, Hawai'i. He received his PhD and BS from Michigan Tech in 2012 and 2000 respectively and his MS from Villanova University in 2003. Prior to returning to academia Bos spent ten years working as an engineer in the defense and automotive industries. He is a senior member of Optica, IEEE, and a Fellow of SPIE. Bos is an author on over 100 scholarly contributions including 7 patents. His research interests are in atmospheric optics, laser beam propagation, beam direction, and scene recovery.