Study Of Imaging Radar Using Ultra-Wideband Microwave-Modulated Infrared Laser

In this paper, we present an ultra-wideband microwave-modulated laser radar which is designed and fabricated for improvement of the spatial resolution both in the range direction and the azimuth direction. The amplitude modulation in a range of 0.01-18 GHz is applied to an infrared laser source of 1550 nm wavelength. The frequency and the bandwidth are assigned by the Administration of Radio under the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications in Japan. However, there is no bandwidth limitation in the infrared region. Considering the influence of radiation pattern for microwave antennas case, there is no side lobe in laser beam transmission. Ambiguous signal and interferences which are returned from the ground can be suppressed. A prototype of laser-radar system with a fiber collimator for both transmitting and receiving optics has been fabricated. A vector network analyzer is used to obtain S-21 signal between the microwave modulation input and that of received signal. The system is, at first, applied to the measurement of the distance (position) of an object. It is proved that the spatial resolution is less than 1 cm during 5-10 m. As an initial experiment, we have succeeded to obtain 3D image of object by scanning a laser beam in two dimensions.