Design and analysis of a coded aperture imaging system with engineered PSFs for wide field of view imaging

The design of novel imaging systems for wide area surveillance poses unique challenges that range from practical aperture design to the sheer number of pixels that must be sensed. Towards this end, we have developed an imaging system that employs interleaved sparse-apertures with multiplexed look directions to achieve wide area coverage while simultaneously achieving resolution. Point Spread Function (PSF) engineering is key to combating the effects of chromaticity and recovering resolution in such a system. Specifically, we show that a combination of micro-prisms and micro-piston arrays can be optimized to approximate the PSF of bulk prisms over a range of wavelengths. The resulting optics is much smaller and lighter than bulk prisms, and also easier to fabricate for interleaved surfaces. The proposed technique maps many resolution cells to the same pixel, and is motivated by the desire to reduce the number of focal plane arrays as well as the overall size, weight and power requirements for the sensor system.