Three dimensional digital holographic aperture synthesis

Abstract

Aperture synthesis techniques are applied to temporally and spatially diverse digital holograms recorded with a fast focal-plane array. Because the technique fully resolves the downrange dimension using wide-bandwidth FMCW linear-chirp waveforms, extremely high resolution three dimensional (3D) images can be obtained even at very long standoff ranges. This allows excellent 3D image formation even when targets have significant structure or discontinuities, which are typically poorly rendered with multi-baseline synthetic aperture ladar or multi-wavelength holographic aperture ladar approaches. The background for the system is described and system performance is demonstrated through both simulation and experiments.