Compressed sensing for super-resolution spatial and temporal laser detection and ranging

In the past decades, laser aided electro-optical sensing has reached high maturity and several commercial systems are available at the market for various but specific applications. These systems can be used for detection i.e. imaging as well as ranging. They cover laser scanning devices like LiDAR and staring full frame imaging systems like laser gated viewing or LADAR. The sensing capabilities of these systems is limited by physical parameter (like FPA array size, temporal band width, scanning rate, sampling rate) and is adapted to specific applications. Change of system parameter like an increase of spatial resolution implies the setup of a new sensing device with high development cost or the purchase and installation of a complete new sensor unit. Computational imaging approaches can help to setup sensor devices with flexible or adaptable sensing capabilities. Especially, compressed sensing is an emerging computational method which is a promising candidate to realize super-resolution sensing with the possibility to adapt its performance to various sensing tasks. It is possible to increase sensing capabilities with compressed sensing to gain either higher spatial and/or temporal resolution. Then, the sensing capabilities depend no longer only on the physical performance of the device but also on the computational effort and can be adapted to the application. In this paper, we demonstrate and discuss laser aided imaging using CS for super-resolution tempo-spatial imaging and ranging.