Abstract

A pulsed hybrid CO₂ transversely excited atmosphere (TEA) laser has been used in a bistatic laser rangefinder–velocimeter system with heterodyne detection. Several techniques have been applied to improve the performance of the system. These include the stabilization of the hybrid CO₂ TEA-laser and the stabilization of the frequency offset of the local oscillator (better than ±74 kHz peak to peak), phase-front matching at the detector surface resulting in a heterodyne beat efficiency of 0.4–0.6, and chirp correction. With this system, targets at distances of up to 25 km can be detected with an accuracy of 15 m. The velocity of the targets can be estimated with an accuracy of approximately ±0.5 m/s.

© 1994 Optical Society of America

Pulsed CO₂ TEA laser rangefinder

M. J. Taylor, P. H. Davies, D. W. Brown, W. F. Woods, I. D. Bell, and C. J. Kennedy
Appl. Opt. 17(6) 885-889 (1978)

Transversely excited atmospheric CO₂ laser radar with heterodyne detection

J. M. Cruickshank
Appl. Opt. 18(3) 290-293 (1979)

Using the spectral asymmetry of TEA CO₂ laser pulses to determine the Doppler-shift sign in coherent lidars with low frequency stability

Vladimir Stoykov Marinov and Dimitar Vassilev Stoyanov
Appl. Opt. 38(12) 2579-2585 (1999)

Pulse compression of an FM chirped CO₂ laser

M. J. Halmos, D. M. Henderson, and R. L. Duvall
Appl. Opt. 28(17) 3595-3602 (1989)

Pulsed CO₂-laser heterodyne radar for simultaneous measurements of range and velocity

Friedrich Malota
Appl. Opt. 23(19) 3395-3399 (1984)