On the estimation of atmospheric turbulence statistical characteristics

Recent works on adaptive optics (AO) systems have shown that the knowledge of static and dynamic characteristics of the atmospheric turbulence can be exploited to improve the performances of the AO control system. Then, motivated by the importance of an effective control for compensating the atmospheric turbulence effect and thus improving the real resolution of ground-based telescopes, in this paper we investigate the estimation of both the static (i.e. purely spatial) and dynamic characteristics of the turbulence. According with commonly accepted statistical models, spatial second order statistics of the turbulence are characterized by two parameters, namely the outer-scale and the Fried parameter: We propose a data-based estimation procedure for these parameters. Then, from a dynamical point of view, the turbulence is typically assumed to be formed by a discrete set of layers moving over the telescope aperture: We show how a Markov random field (MRF) representation, based on the already computed spatial parameters, allow us to estimate the number of layers and their characteristics.