Development of Plenoptic Camera as Wavefront Sensor

Abstract

The accuracy of a signal decreases with an increase in distance and turbulence level in the fields of remote sensing ,freespaceopticalcommunication, and directed energy applications. Due to the optical effects in turbulent atmospheric conditions for distances beyond the range of a kilometre, weak energy signals limit the range for these applications. The optical effect arises from the variation in temperature and causes fluctuations in the refractive index of air. These weak signals have distorted phase and amplitude, which is corrected using adaptive optics. Adaptive optics uses a wavefront sensor to detect and compensate the distortion effects. The development of the plenoptic camera as a wavefront sensor is a significant development in the field of adaptive optics. A plenoptic camera is capable of wavefront sensing and its post image processing algorithms are used for image correction, phase and amplitude corrections, and decoding optical signals. In this paper, we develop a plenoptic camera as an alternative to the wavefront sensor for strong atmospheric turbulence effects and compare its performance with the Shark-Hartmann wavefrontsensor.Thedesignedplenopticcameraisillustratedtoimproveoverthedrawbackofaconventional wavefront sensor that works well only at weak atmospheric turbulent conditions. Our results prove that the designed plenoptic camera can compensate to the effects of turbulence.