Statistical characterization of the point spread function (PSF) of a turbulence degraded imaging system

Abstract

In tills tlicsis, the circct of atmospheric turbulence on an incoherent imaging systcMii is analyzed. 'I’lie combination of the atmosphere and the imaging system is modelled as a linear system with a stochastic point spread function (PSF). ddie mean and the covariance of the PSF are evaluated and plotted for a variety of system parameters and atmospheric conditions. The results predicted by this work are shown to be in very good agreement with experimental results published in the literature.