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Conformal optical domes are characterized as having external more elongated optical surfaces that are optimized to
minimize drag, increased missile velocity and extended operational range. The outer surface of the conformal domes
typically deviate greatly from spherical surface descriptions, so the inherent asymmetry of conformal surfaces leads to
variations in the aberration content presented to the optical sensor as it is gimbaled across the field of regard, which
degrades the sensor's ability to properly image targets of interest and then undermine the overall system performance.
Consequently, the aerodynamic advantages of conformal domes cannot be realized in practical systems unless the
dynamic aberration correction techniques are developed to restore adequate optical imaging capabilities. Up to now,
many optical correction solutions have been researched in conformal optical design, including static aberrations
corrections and dynamic aberrations corrections. There are three parts in this paper. Firstly, the combination of static and
dynamic aberration correction is introduced. A system for correcting optical aberration created by a conformal dome has
an outer surface and an inner surface. The optimization of the inner surface is regard as the static aberration correction;
moreover, a deformable mirror is placed at the position of the secondary mirror in the two-mirror all reflective imaging
system, which is the dynamic aberration correction. Secondly, the using of appropriate surface types is very important in
conformal dome design. Better performing optical systems can result from surface types with adequate degrees of
freedom to describe the proper corrector shape. Two surface types and the methods of using them are described,
including Zernike polynomial surfaces used in correct elements and user-defined surfaces used in deformable mirror
(DM). Finally, the Adaptive optics (AO) correction is presented. In order to correct the dynamical residual aberration in
conformal optical design, the SPGD optimization algorithm is operated at each zoom position to calculate the optimized
surface shape of the MEMS DM. The communication between MATLAB and Code V established via ActiveX technique
is applied in simulation analysis.
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