Development of a 1310-nm, Coherent Laser Radar with RF Pulse Compression

• Main Authors: Christopher Allen Yanki, Christopher Allen, Yanki Cobanoglu, Sekken Kenny Chong, Sivaprasad Gogineni
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2000
• Subjects: Ice Sheet
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.21.2182; http://rsl.ukans.edu/publications/documents/Allen2000_IGARSS00LaserRadarPaper.pdf

NASA, ESA, and NASDA are planning to launch several satellites with LIDARs on board to measure ice sheet surface elevation, vegetation characteristics, and aerosol characteristics. LIDARs on these satellites will transmit short, high-peak power pulses to obtain adequate detection sensitivity and resolution. The disadvantages of high-eak power transmitters are that they require high-current power supplies and have low PRFs and limited lifetime. At The University of Kansas we are developing a pulse compression LIDAR featuring reduced peak power requirements and increased PRF to obtain more dense sampling. We have developed and have reported (IGARSS'99) [1] 1550-nm fiber-optic based, coherent laser radar (lidar) that uses traditional RF pulse compression and digital signal processing techniques to enhance its range measurement capability. We have since migrated the wavelength to 1310nm to improve the sensitivity to snow and ice while continuing to exploit the commercially available fiber-optic components such as distributed-feedback (DFB) lasers, modulators, and praseodymium-doped flouride fiber amplifiers (PDFFAs). To improve the radiometric sensitivity beyond that of the direct detection receiver, we have also developed a polarization-diverse, superheterodyne receiver. We will present system design details, results of theoretical performance analyses, and performance test results.