Optimum adaptive imaging through atmospheric turbulence

Recent results for the atmospheric mode decomposition are applied to an idealized imaging problem in which the receiver has a priori knowledge of the channel impulse response and mode decomposition. It is shown that a channel-matched filter receiver is essentially optimum and, on the average, achieves diffraction-limited performance. Furthermore, when the transmitting aperture lies within a single isoplanatic patch, this system may be realized without a priori channel knowledge by transmitted reference techniques.