초록 ▼

An optical scintillometer is provided which is operative to measure atmospheric wake vortex turbulence intensity up to a distance of ten kilometers. The optical scintillometer provides real time continuous measurements of aircraft generated wake vortex turbulence intensity in the field of operations

An optical scintillometer is provided which is operative to measure atmospheric wake vortex turbulence intensity up to a distance of ten kilometers. The optical scintillometer provides real time continuous measurements of aircraft generated wake vortex turbulence intensity in the field of operations employing a transmitter, receiver, and digital processing circuitry. The signal is digitized before comparison with a threshold to eliminate events attributable to objects moving through the path of the optical transmitter and receiver. The system is thereby able to perform calculations to adjust the first order log-amplitude variance function in the saturation regime. An extremely important aspect of the invention is the digitization of the signal and its comparison with the threshold signal. Because a digital signal is compared with a threshold signal level, invalid signal inputs are excluded from the calculation of path-averaged turbulence intensity. The exclusion of such signals assures the data quality in computing the refractive turbulence intensity even when there is an interruption of the infrared beam. This feature is critical for the data processing. Data produced when the optical path is obstructed by moving vehicles, pedestrians, and airplanes is not used for processing to protect the quality of the output measurements.

대표청구항 ▼

[ I claim:] [1.] A method of determining temporally and spatially averaged aircraft generated wake vortex turbulence in real time comprising:generating an infrared optical signal,partially collimating said infrared optical signal utilizing an optical collimator,transmitting said collimated optical s

[ I claim:] [1.] A method of determining temporally and spatially averaged aircraft generated wake vortex turbulence in real time comprising:generating an infrared optical signal,partially collimating said infrared optical signal utilizing an optical collimator,transmitting said collimated optical signal through atmosphere up to a distance of ten kilometers,receiving said transmitted optical signal and focusing said transmitted optical signal onto a photodetector utilizing a focusing device, thereby generating received analog signals,converting said received analog signals to digital form to produce received digital signals,comparing each of said received digital signals with a predetermined digital threshold level to produce data output signals for only those of said received digital signals that are at least as great as said predetermined digital threshold level, andcalculating the path averaged log amplitude variance of said data output signals to provide a wake vortex dynamic impulse.