Joint maximum likelihood estimator for pupil and image plane data

Abstract

Laser imaging through atmospheric turbulence is a challenging problem due primarily to turbulence near the aperture. Amplitude measurements of the return beam in the aperture plane are less sensitive to near-field turbulence, but contain limited information about the Fourier phase of the target image. We propose a method of using deconvolution of laser speckle degraded imagery, together with pupil plane techniques, to produce coherent image reconstructions with spatial resolution not limited by the atmospheric conditions. The technique is demonstrated using computer simulation.