Ultra-Compact Doppler LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) for Unmanned Aerial/Ground Vehicles

Coherent Laser Radar is becoming a versatile remote sensing tool. It is applied to a wide variety of situations ranging from atmospheric monitoring of wind and aerosols to vibrometric monitoring of remote objects.[1] A compact, low weight system is however required to break into most of the applications relevant to DoD, such as wind-shear detection in unmanned vehicles, detection of chemical and biological aerosols in both ground and airbase platforms and vibrometry of remotely located objects. We propose here a series of technological implementations and a path towards a very compact lidar system allowing for the monitoring of winds in the 1550nm eye-safe region at ranges of several kilometers. We also show that the proposed system is capable of measuring winds in a wide range of atmospheric conditions. The proposed system is very versatile since it will also have the ability to perform coherent molecular DIAL measurements and DISC measurements of Biological compounds. In this Phase II SBIR, we will focus our efforts in demonstrating the ability of monitoring winds at ranges of several kilometers with technologies allowing for compact, rugged and durable Lidar systems.