Method and system for measuring the influence of turbulent disturbances on a laser irradiation of a non-cooperative target passing through a turbulent atmosphere

A system for measuring influence of turbulent disturbances due to a turbulent atmosphere, the system comprising:

• a laser device configured to generate a measurement laser beam;
• an optical device configured to focus the measurement laser beam on a target, receive reflections of the measurement laser beam reflected by the target and collimate the reflections on a sensor plane;
• a sensor device configured to repeatedly measure a location-dependent gradient field of a wavefront of the collimated reflections in the sensor plane,
• wherein the laser device is configured to adjust the measurement laser beam such that the measurements are statistically independent of each other, and
• a calculation device configured to generate an averaged gradient filed by calculating an average of the location-dependent gradient fields and estimate a turbulence disturbance due to the turbulence atmosphere of the measurement laser beam,
• wherein an associated turbulence-disturbed wavefront is reconstructed by the calculation device from the averaged gradient field.

A method comprising:

• irradiating a target with a measurement laser beam that passes through the atmosphere to the target;
• receiving and collimating a reflection of the laser beam from the target on a sensor plane of a sensor device;
• repeatedly measuring a location-dependent gradient field of a wavefront of the reflection by the sensor device;
• shifting or distorting the measurement laser beam during the irradiation to ensure that the measurements of the location-dependent gradient fields are statistically independent of each other, and
• using the measurements of the location-dependent gradient field to estimate a turbulence disturbance of the measurement laser beam.