SBIR-STTR Award

The primary objective of this SBIR will be to design a processing system that will meet the high bandwidth, computationally intensive, requirements of real-time tracking through turbulence and wavefront tilt and scintillation measurement and compensation. The processing system design will consist of central processing unit(s), digital signal processor(s), high speed memory modules, input/output modules, operating system, data and control bus, application software, development environment, and a performance analysis/verification system. We will utilize our extensive experience designing acquisition, tracking, and pointing algorithms and systems for laser weapon systems, combined with our work on the ABL Beam Control/Fire Control (BC/FC) Preliminary Design Review and BC/FC Processor Throughput Demonstration along with Dr. Merritt's Advanced Tracking SBIR and Dr. Dillow's Kalman Filter Tracker Broad Agency Announcement. We will apply our knowledge of high-speed image processing systems with an awareness of ABL testing plans at North Oscura Peak and technology development plans from the ABL technology office

The product of this effort will be a high bandwidth (5 Khz) tracking system based on COTS hardware. The system will be capable of performing multiple track algoriths including several new Kalman filter techniques designed to perform well in the presence of scintillated atmospheric conditions. The system will incorporate multiple state of the art RISC processors perofrming parallel processing. Phase I of this project demonstrated the feasibility of implementing such a system. In Phase II, the High bandwidth Advanced Tracker (HiBAT) will be designed, built, and tested both in the laboratory and in the field.

Keywords:
TRACKING THROUGH TURBULENCEHIGH BANDWIDTH TRACKING KALMAN FILTER TRACKER TRACKER PRODUCTS SCINTILLAT