Novel Imager System

A NEW RANGE-DOPPLER LASER-RADAR FOR SOLID TARGET DETECTION WITH 1 M RANGE AND 0.5 M/S VELOCITY RESOLUTION AT RANGES UP TO SEVERAL HUNDRED KILOMETERS IS PROPOSED. A MULTI-BEAM AGILE SCANNER FEATURE WILL PROVIDE ANGULAR DISCRIMINATION ACROSS A LARGE FOV IMAGE WITH A WIDE FIELD OF REGARD. RANGE RESOLUTION, DOWN 1O 1 M, AND VELOCITY RESOLUTION DOWN TO 0.5 M/S (WITH A DYNAMIC RANGE UP TO 11,000 KM/S) ARE OBTAINED USING SESI'S PROPRIETARY PSEUDO-RANDOM-MODULATION CW LASER-RADAR TECHNIQUE, RESPECTIVELY. IN THIS SENSOR CONCEPT, A CW INFRARED LASER DIODE TRANSMITTER IS MODULATED BY A PSEUDO-RANDOM CODE, AND THE RETURN IS PASSED THROUGH A DOPPLER FILTER. DIGITAL PROCESSING IS USED TO DETERMINE THE RANGE AND VELOCITY OF THE TARGET IN REAL TIME. THE OPTICAL RECEIVER WILL CONSIST OF A SMALL SIZE TELESCOPE, SIMPLE DOPPLER OPTICS AND A PAIR OF DETECTOR ARRAYS. A SYSTEM MICROPROCESSOR WILL ACCQUIRE DATA, PROCESS IT, AND PRESENT THE RESULT IN BOTH DIGITAL AND VISUAL FORMAT. THE PROPOSED COMPACT, LIGHTWEIGHT, COST EFFECTIVE LASER-RADAR WILL BE INTRINSICALLY INSENSITIVE TO NOISE AS WELL AS OTHER SYSTEM BIASES, PROMISING ROBUST PERFORMANCE UNDER FIELD CONDITIONS. THE LOW POWER CONSUMPTION AND DESIGN SIMPLICITY OF THE SYSTEM WILL ALLOW FOR AUTONOMOUS, MAINTENANCE-FREE, AIRBORNE AND SPACEBORNE OPERATIONS. IN PHASE I OF THIS PROGRAM WE PROPOSE TO CARRY OUT PROOF-OF-CONCEPT EXPERIMENTS FOR SUBSYSTEMS, CRITICAL SYSTEM ANALYSIS, AND PRELIMINARY SYSTEM DESIGN.