Inventors:
Barry L. Stann - Silver Spring MD
William C. Ruff - Baltimore MD
Zoltan G. Sztankay - Rockville MD
Assignee:
The United States of America as represented by the Secretary of the Army - Washington DC
International Classification:
G01C 308, G01S 1308
Abstract:
In a high range resolution ladar, a chirp signal waveform is propagated as a divergent laser light waveform and the target reflected return is collected and converted to a current proportional to power. An undelayed chirp signal is added in a mixer to the return current and then low pass filtered to recover a mixed intermediate frequency (IF) signal having a frequency proportional to the target range. Periodically, the light circuit is interrupted and the chirp signal is processed through the mixer and low pass filter without a target return current and this output, the mixer self-clutter, is stored. This stored self-clutter signal is subsequently subtracted from the mixed IF signal on a chirp by chirp basis to cancel the self-clutter produced by the mixer. The subtracted signal is then frequency analyzed to determine target range.