Miniature Fiber Wind LADAR

Systems & Processes Engineering Corporation (SPEC) proposes a Wind Measurement LADAR System for measuring the wind field in the airspace around US Navy Air Capable Ships. The system uses a fiber optic based, eye-safe wind LADAR, initially designed for UAV systems, brought to bread board level on Army and NASA programs. The system leans on existing telecom fiber technology allowing low cost and miniature sizing. The sensor features a coherent fiber optic transceiver with a narrow band seed, AOM (Acousto Optical Modulator) for frequency shift and pulse forming, a three stage EDFA amplifier, all operating at eye-safe 1550nm. The LADAR uses phase encoded pulse trains allowing a 13/1 signal to noise improvement and 13x smaller range cells while preserving Doppler accuracy. This LADAR allows air current Doppler detection beyond 3km. The sensor output is Doppler shift in 3D pixels (voxels), 90 degree vertically 360 degrees horizontally, stabilized in global coordinates using a MEMs IMU/GPS input, giving full ship area wind profiles. The original UAV specifications meet the system requirements, with additional range capability. Electronics, laser and receiver are in PCIe 104 format, meeting the objective size requirement. Global stabilized scan allows voxel scan revisit to allow 1ft/sec velocity accuracy.