Imaging with an array of adaptive subapertures.
An imaging system composed of an array of adaptive optics subapertures referred to as a conformal imaging system is considered. A conformal image of an object viewed through atmospheric turbulence is obtained using the following sequential steps: adaptive compensation of phase distortions through optimization of image quality metrics at each subaperture, measurements of the phase and intensity distributions corresponding to the compensated subaperture images, digital combining and processing of the obtained data, computation of a conformal image using arbitrary phase shifts between subapertures, and correction of these phase shifts through conformal image quality optimization using the stochastic parallel gradient descent algorithm. Numerical simulation results of a dual-star conformal image through atmospheric turbulence are presented.