Deep Learning-Based Prediction Algorithm On Atmospheric Turbulence-Induced Wavefront for Adaptive Optics

Correction performance of an adaptive optics (AO) system is severely limited by its system latency under high temporal frequency distortions. Wavefront prediction methods has been proven to be an effective way to compensate system delay. A novel wavefront prediction method based on residual learning fusion network (RLFNet) is proposed in this paper. The network is able to eliminate redundant information between adjacent wavefront frames and fuse refined features, which provides a higher prediction accuracy under fewer priori wavefront input. The method is tested on a 1km laser atmospheric transmission experimental setup through high frequency atmospheric turbulence, where wavefront data is collected from a 1kHz Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor (SHWS). We show that the proposed architecture is able to predict the second frame wavefront after the previous 6 frames with a root-mean-square (RMS) wavefront error reduction up to 53% compare to non-predictive method.