VISIBLE LASER-RADAR - RANGE TOMOGRAPHY AND ANGLE-ANGLE-RANGE DETECTION

This paper compares two detectors for visible laser radar: a 1-D detector that resolves a target in range and a 3-D detector that resolves a target in angle and range. For both, a short pulse laser illuminates the target. For both, the receiver is based on a streak camera, which detects reflected light from the illuminated target and resolves the light in time. The time resolution is 250 ps, so the target is resolved into 4 cm range cells. The 1-D detector focuses the reflected light to a point. The output is the 1-D, range-resolved projection of the target. The 3-D detector images the target on a focal plane, which is dissected by a fiber optic image converter attached to the streak camera. The output is a 3-D image of the target. For both detectors, we show data from two simple targets. The paper also compares two methods of remote sensing using these detectors: 2-D range tomography using data from the 1-D detector and angle-angle-range imagery using the 3-D data.