Non-mechanical beam control for synthetic aperture LADAR

ABSTRACT:Non-mechanical beam steering technology for synthetic aperture LADAR (SAL) is proposed. To enable this low size weight and power (SWaP) subsystem, wide angle non-mechanical beam steering (NMBS) will be implemented using polarization grating technology. The technology will be evaluated for compatibility with a beam control system for SAL. For Phase I Boulder Nonlinear Systems (BNS) and our teaming partners, Exciting Technology and Beyond Photonics, propose to build wide angle beam steering components and measure their effect on the phase of a modulated laser. We will also investigate the feasibility of incorporating one of three different fine steering approaches based on optical phased array technology into the beam control subsystem. Wavelength dispersion, laser waveforms and image reconstruction algorithms will also be investigated. Finally we will design a prototype beam control system to be implemented in Phase II. BENEFIT:The effort proposed here represents an improvement to synthetic aperture LADAR (SAL) sensor systems by enabling their use in size weight and power (SWaP) constrained tactical pods. Several DoD platforms could benefit from a low SWaP beam steering approach. In addition commercial 3D mapping would benefit.