USA As Represented by Secretary of the Navy

John D Channer

Bruce M Heydlauff

Dennis G McKinney

Provided is a system, and general method of use that may be applied to the specific system, that overlays appropriately selected impulse response maps of the response of a weapon system's optical detector over successive detailed supercomputer-generated imaged scenes. Each of the impulse response maps have been pre-calculated and stored in addressable memory in preparation for running a simulation. A preferred embodiment then convolves the response maps with the appropriately selected imaged scene in cooperation with a gyro model and, optionally, a model of the airframe on which the detector is carried. Errors determined from the gyro model are used to calculate and provide an address offset to modify values of the response map's base address for the appropriate map pixels. Scene pixel values that undergo convolution are selected using portions of these modified base address values. A pixel's intensity value from the impulse response map is selected by using these changed base address values prior to convolution as well as the position information from the gyro model. During the convolution, the intensity values assigned to the selected scene pixels' are multiplied by those values from the appropriate impulse response map. This generates resultant values that are summed to produce a final convolved representation, or convolved image, that may be further processed by a digital-to-analog converter to output an analog signal of voltage versus time. This analog signal may be filtered to reduce any associated noise. A preferred embodiment generates a realistic simulation of dynamically changing scenes as viewed by an actual system's optical detector in real time. The simulation may be presented to an actual weapon system's signal processing circuitry for performance evaluation of that circuitry.

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Ridgecrest, CA, United States of America

John D Channer