Experimental study of a compressive line sensing imaging system in a turbulent environment

Area of Science:

• Optical Engineering
• Remote Sensing
• Signal Processing

Background:

• Turbulence significantly degrades imaging performance in atmospheric and underwater surveillance.
• Compressive Line Sensing (CLS) is an active imaging technique effective in scattering media.
• CLS leverages distributed compressive sensing, exploiting signal sparsity and spatial correlations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the effectiveness of the CLS imaging system in turbulent environments.
• To develop and test a compact CLS prototype under varying turbulence conditions.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a CLS prototype with a digital micromirror device and a photomultiplier tube detector.
• Generated 1D binary sensing patterns from a codebook to encode target line segments.
• Recovered target information using encoder output and a predicted on-target codebook accounting for environmental interference.

Main Results:

• Time-averaged measurements demonstrated improved signal-to-noise ratio in extreme turbulence.
• Reconstructed image resolution was enhanced under high turbulence conditions.
• CLS proved effective even in challenging, turbulent environments.

Conclusions:

• CLS imaging is a viable technique for surveillance in turbulent conditions.
• Time-averaging is a key factor in improving CLS performance under turbulence.
• The developed CLS prototype shows potential for practical applications in challenging environments.