Study On Optical Heterodyne Detection For Synthetic Aperture Ladar

Synthetic aperture ladar (SAL) as a combination of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) technology and laser radar (Ladar) technology, can achieve much higher spatial resolution than SAR, and long-distance, large-scale imaging and many other advantages. It has been the research focus in the filed of radar technology.As the key technology in SAL, optical heterodyne detection is studied in this paper. A number of factors that affect optical heterodyne detection are analyzed. Theoretical analysis of two commonly used wave-front match receiving scheme from both energy efficiency and the maximum mismatching angle is presented, and the optical heterodyne experiment by use of a diode-pumped solid-state laser is also made.In this paper the root-mean-square height and correlation length, two basic and extremely important parameters have been used to characterize the mathematical properties of the random rough surface. The Monte Carlo method by use of Matlab is presented to construct the one- and two-dimension Gaussian random surface. Through the simulation, the influence of the state of the target surface on the performances of the optical heterodyne detection is discussed.