Noise Mechanisms Impacting Micro-Doppler Lidar Signals: Theory and Experiment

Abstract

Lidar remote sensing of micro-Doppler signals is important for many military applications including characterization and identification of ground and airborne targets (NCTID) and battle damage assessment. The single most important performance metric of these sensors is their velocity measurement precision. The velocity precision of a micro-Doppler lidar is limited by any one of various noise sources, which include shot-noise, local-oscillator frequency noise, speckle decorrelation noise and refractive turbulence piston noise. In this paper, we present a theory, which describes these noise sources and their wavelength dependence. For example, it will be shown that the turbulence piston noise is wavelength independent, while the wavelength dependence of speckle decorrelation noise depends upon whether or not the target is resolved. Furthermore, the noise sources are, to a first-order, independent of the interrogation waveform classification (i.e., pulsed or CW). The results from recent field measurements using a doublet- pulse and CW lidar are presented.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Apr 01, 2000
Accession Number
ADA392238

Entities

People

  • J. A. Thomson
  • Philip Gatt
  • Sammy W. Henderson
  • Stephen M. Hannon

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes
  • Sensors

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Battle Damage Assessment
  • Damage Assessment
  • Detection
  • Detectors
  • Frequency
  • Frequency Bands
  • Laser Radar
  • Lasers
  • Local Oscillators
  • Measurement
  • Military Applications
  • Monte Carlo Method
  • Oscillators
  • Precision
  • Remote Sensing
  • Shot Noise
  • Standards

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Electronics Engineering
  • Optical Physics and Photonics.
  • Sensor Fusion and Tracking Systems.