Piston alignment for a segmented-aperture imaging system by using piston-sweep phasing

Timothy J. Schulz and Richard G. Paxman

Index: 10.1364/OL.42.002922

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Abstract

This Letter presents a novel method for aligning the piston settings for a segmented-aperture imaging system. By sweeping the piston setting for a reference segment, a stack of images can be acquired that encodes information about the relative piston alignment for all segments in the system. We also demonstrate how a matched-filter processing method can be used to estimate the relative piston settings to align the imaging system at its full resolution.