KEYWORDS: Error analysis, Statistical analysis, Photons, Laser systems engineering, Monte Carlo methods, Computer simulations, Detection and tracking algorithms, Systems modeling, Data modeling, Gaussian beams
Boresight and jitter that cause energy loss and decline of the system performance are two fundamental pointing errors for
a laser pointing system. Based on the statistics of the return photons reflected from target and estimation of the pointing
errors, a second-order moment estimation algorithm is proposed. This algorithm that is the expansion of the Key-rate
method can estimate boresight and jitter simultaneously. In this paper, a laser pointing system model based on a Gaussian
far-field irradiance profile and a Gaussian beam jitter is setup, a laboratory experiment is performed, and the simulation
and experimental data is processed by this estimator. The results demonstrate that the performance of the second-order
moment estimation is excellent and the performance improves with the increasing number of shots. What’s more, the
further study finds that the experimental results agree well with the simulation results.
In all laser pointing systems, boresight and jitter are two fundamental pointing errors arising from vibrations and
atmospheric turbulence. The maximum-likelihood estimation1 advanced by Deva K.borah recently can simultaneously
estimate jitter and boresight. Besides some traditional qualities just like high precision and speediness, the
maximum-likelihood estimation has a new quality that the performance of this estimator is different when boresight and
jitter errors are different. Furthermore, the Monte Carlo simulation results demonstrate that the maximum-likelihood
estimation has a higher degree of precision when boresight is bigger than jitter. According to this, a careful analysis is
made and some advice is given for the readers who wish to obtain high precise results.
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