LASER ATTRITABLE SURVEILLANCE ENHANCEMENT (LASE)

Exciting Technology LLC is developing revolutionary optical beam steering technology that will make lidars more capable, smaller, lighter, and cheaper.  We are working both novel near term mechanical steering technology, combined with small angle, rapid and extremely accurate nonmechanical steering, and longer term, fully non-mechanical, optical beam steering technology. Dr McManamon has been developing optical beam steering technology for > 3.5 decades.[i],[ii],[iii]  Exciting Technology has filed >25 patents. The non-mechanical fine steering can point with extreme accuracy.[iv] Our hybrid novel optical beam steering can provide > ±30° mechanical optical beam steering, coupled with ~±1° non-mechanical optical beam steering.? The fast, non-mechanical beam steering will perform ~10s of µsec response time and ~10s of µrad pointing. Because of rapid small angle pointing, we can use a small format camera.  We have two suppliers, SRI and Acubit, that have provided letters saying in volume they plan to be able to sell small format photon counting GMAPD cameras for <$10K each.  The proposed lidar/LRF we will develop under phase 2 will be smaller than a gimbal based lidar/LRF, will be conformal, and will steer with better precision.  The proposed phase 2 design includes the hybrid steering system, 1.5?m laser, GMAPD detector, and optional visible wavelength and/or thermal LWIR cameras.  If sufficient location cueing for the LiDAR system is provided on the sensor platform, then the visible and thermal cameras can be removed for further C-SWaP improvement. Overall, the proposed system is a highly-capable LiDAR system for ISR missions made possible using our unique beam steering technology, and affordable GMAPDs that are being developed because of our interaction with the vendors.?  Lastly ET is working with OEI to leverage a 1550 nm pulsed laser development program they have with DJTO, to supply a powerful and capable laser at an affordable cost.   By replacing a $1M MX-15 ball that sticks out into the wind stream with a similar size and weight >20 km 3D imager, and >50km rangefinder that can be made conformal, and costs 10 times less, Exciting Technology (ET) will provide the technology required to fight and win against a near per adversary.  [i] Optical phased array technology, PF McManamon, TA Dorschner, DL Corkum, LJ Friedman, DS Hobbs, ...Proceedings of the IEEE 84 (2), 268-298[ii] A review of phased array steering for narrow-band electrooptical systemsPF McManamon, PJ Bos, MJ Escuti, J Heikenfeld, S Serati, H Xie, ..., Proceedings of the IEEE 97 (6), 1078-1096[iii] Progress and opportunities in the development of nonmechanical beam steering for electro-optical systemsPF McManamon, A Ataei, Optical Engineering 58 (12), 120901-120901[iv] Burrell Hatcher, “ Granularity of Beam Positions in Phased Arrays”, Proceedings of the IEEE, vol 56, #11, 1968