System for and method of synchronous acquisition of pulsed source light in performance of monitoring aircraft flight operation

A method of using an aircraft-borne system to accomplish early acquisition of landing zone illumination obscured from pilot view because of visible light extinguishing atmospheric conditions, comprising:

• modulating the landing zone illumination at a modulation rate, the landing zone illumination emitting light in first and second wavelength ranges;
• using first and second imaging cameras that are sensitive to light in the respective first and second wavelength ranges to acquire sequences of image frames of a scene in which the landing zone illumination is contained, the sequences of image frames being acquired at rates that are synchronized to the modulation rate, and each of the sequences of image frames including first and second sets of images representing, respectively, background scene information including the landing zone illumination and background scene information not including the landing zone illumination;
• processing the first and second sets of images of each sequence to remove the background scene information from temporally corresponding images of the first and second sets and thereby provide processed image information;
• and
• fusing the processed image information relating to each of the sequences and performing on the fused processed image information acquisition of the landing zone illumination.

A method of accomplishing early acquisition of light emitted by a target source located at a distance from an imaging camera to perform monitoring of aircraft flight operation, comprising:

• modulating the target source light emission being modulated at a modulation Rate;, comprising:
• using the imaging camera to acquire a sequence of image frames of a scene in which the modulated target source light emission is contained, the sequence of image frames being acquired at a rate that is synchronized with and is a known multiple of the modulation rate;
• setting applying the known multiple to which a value is set that causes the sequence of image frames to include first and second sets of images representing;, respectively, background scene information including the modulated target source light emission and background scene information not including the modulated target source light emission;
• and
• processing the first and second sets of images to remove the background scene information from temporally corresponding images of the first and second sets and thereby provide processed image information from which acquisition of the modulated target source light emission can be performed to enable the monitoring of aircraft flight operation.