Laboratory Test Results for Adaptive Optics Using Image-based Wavefront Sensing for Remote Sensing

Abstract

Remote sensing observations with high resolution and high signal-to-noise ratio require a large-aperture optical system. To achieve these requirements, we propose an adaptive optics system that compensates the wavefront aberration due to misalignment or thermal deformation of optical elements. We use an image-based wavefront sensing technique to realize simple hardware architecture and high signal-to-noise ratio. For image-based sensing, a priori information is required in addition to the acquired images, which was achieved in our case using a phase diversity (PD) wavefront sensing method. We apply PD using a liquid crystal on silicon spatial light modulator (LCOS-SLM). For remote sensing in which the observed scene is moving relative to the observer, we modify the conventional PD method to estimate the parallel shift between the obtained images. We construct an adaptive optics system testbed using LCOS-SLM and a CMOS camera. The laboratory test results show that the proposed system improves the optical performance of remote-sensing sensors.