Abstract

Laser radars have the unique capability to give intensity and full 3-D images of an object Doppler lidars can give velocity and vibration characteristics of an objects These systems have many civilian and military applications such as terrain modelling, depth sounding, object detection and classification as well as object positioning There are several laser radar technique¹ under study using gated viewing², scanning lidars^3,4 and 3-D sensing focal plane arrays⁵ and other scannerless lidars¹. During the study and experimental evaluation of these systems at FOA we have found it necessary to incorporate a good sensor model to be able to explain and foresee the performance of the system during different operating conditions. Example of performance parameters are maximum range, range accuracy and range and transverse resolution.

© 2000 IEEE