Optical signal characteristics analysis of atmospheric disturbance density fields generated by high-speed aircraft

Aircraft disturbs the adjacent atmospheric environment in flight, forming spatial distribution features of atmospheric density that differ from the natural background, which may potentially be utilized as tracer characteristics to introduce new technologies for indirectly sensing the presence of aircraft. In this paper, the concept of a long-range aircraft detection based on the atmospheric disturbance density field is proposed, and the detection mode of tomographic imaging of the scattering light of an atmospheric disturbance flow field is designed. By modeling the spatial distribution of the disturbance density field, the scattered echo signal images of active light towards the disturbance field at long distance are simulated. On this basis, the characteristics of the disturbance optical signal at the optimal detection resolution are analyzed. The results show that the atmospheric disturbance flow field of the supersonic aircraft presents circular in the light-scattering echo images. The disturbance signal can be further highlighted by differential processing of the adjacent scattering images. As the distance behind the aircraft increases, the diffusion range of the disturbance signal increases, and the signal intensity and contrast with the background decrease. Under the ground-based observation conditions of the aircraft at a height of 10000 m, a Mach number of 1.6, and a detection distance of 100 km, the contrast between the disturbance signal and the background was 30 dB at a distance of one time from the rear of the fuselage, and the diffusion diameter of the disturbance signal was 50 m. At a distance eight times the length of the aircraft, the contrast decreased to 10 dB, and the diameter increased to 290 m. The contrast was reduced to 3 dB at a distance nine times the length of the aircraft, and the diameter was diffused to 310 m. These results indicate the possibility of long-range aircraft detection based on the characteristics of the atmospheric density field.