High Speed Random Access Non-Mechanical Beam Steering for 3D Imaging LADAR

ABSTRACT: High resolution 3D LADAR imaging over a wide field of view usually requires mechanical scanning the sensor"s field of view using gimbals, or a high peak power laser pulse and a very large focal plane array at the imaging plane. Both techniques add considerable size, weight, power requirements, and cost to the sensor system. Boulder Nonlinear Systems (BNS) proposes to use high speed (>100 kHz) non-mechanical random access beam steering to produce a tiled image at the focal plane array. With this approach, we expect to enhance the imaging capability as well as reduce the size, weight and cost of the sensor system. In Phase I, BNS will demonstrate non-mechanical beam steering at sub-millisecond speeds and verify a path to speeds under 10 micro-seconds. In Phase II, we will build and demonstrate a non-mechanical beam steering breadboard system. BENEFIT: Methods for providing 3D LADAR imaging are needed for several small platform sensor applications. However, these applications place severe restrictions on size, weight, power and cost. Therefore, techniques for minimizing these parameters without sacrificing other performance requirements will have a significant benefit in these areas.