Optical design of a synthetic aperture ladar antenna system

Abstract

The spatial resolution of a conventional imaging LADAR system is constrained by the diffraction limit of the telescope aperture. The purpose of this work is to investigate Synthetic Aperture Imaging LADAR (SAIL), which employs aperture synthesis with coherent laser radar to overcome the diffraction limit and achieve fine-resolution, long range, two-dimensional imaging with modest aperture diameters. According to the demands of the Synthetic Aperture LADAR (SAL), the key techniques are analyzed briefly. The preliminary design of the optical antenna is also introduced in this paper. We investigate the design method and relevant problems of efficient optical antenna that are required in SAL. The design is pursued on the basis of the same method as is used at microwave frequency. The method is based on numerical analysis and the error values obtained by present manufacturing technology. According to the requirement to SAL with the trial of little size, light mass, low cost and high image quality, the result by ZEMAX will result.