Abstract
We report what is to our knowledge the first demonstration of phase-sensitive coherent summation of individual heterodyne detector array signals for the enhanced detection of spatially distorted laser Doppler returns. With the use of a 2 × 2 heterodyne detector array, the phase and amplitude of a time-varying speckle pattern was detected, and the signal-to-noise ratio of the Doppler shift estimate was shown to be improved by a factor of 2, depending on the extent of spatial coherence loss. These results are shown to agree with a first-order analysis and indicate the advantage of coherent summation for both short-range laser Doppler velocimetry and long-range atmospheric coherent lidar.
© 1992 Optical Society of America
Full Article | PDF ArticleMore Like This
Kin Pui Chan and Dennis K. Killinger
Opt. Lett. 16(16) 1219-1221 (1991)
Kin Pui Chan and Dennis K. Killinger
Appl. Opt. 31(10) 1505-1510 (1992)
Nobuo Sugimoto, Kin Pui Chan, and Dennis K. Killinger
Appl. Opt. 30(18) 2609-2616 (1991)