Proceedings Article | 11 January 2007
KEYWORDS: LIDAR, Imaging systems, Sensors, Data processing, Transmitters, Solids, Laser processing, Fluctuations and noise, Optical antennas, Atmospheric optics
Scannerless lidar has advantages of high frame-rate, large field of view (FOV) and miniaturization etc, it is especially
valuable for military and aerospace engineering applications such as 3D vision, target recognition, autonomous
machinery guidance and collision avoidance etc. In this paper, we analyzed the performance of scannerless imaging
lidar, to investigate this, the overall system is divided into 6 modules according to various functions including
transmitter, optical antenna, atmospheric transmission, target property, detector, data processor etc., whereas the physical
processes of every module have been studied and corresponding mathematical models are also set up. The fundamental
problem of imaging lidar system is numerical solution of lidar equation, however common lidar equation regards target
as a point reflector with the assumption that back reflecting light is distributed uniformly in all directions in 2Π solid
angle, which is not for large FOV situation. In large FOV condition, the target can be regarded as a Lambertian reflector;
the intensity of light back reflected from different part of the target is not same but follows the Lambert cosine law, so
we make a modification for lidar equation, and finally all data from every module are coupled into lidar equation,
through modified lidar equation calculation, the relationship between maximum acquisition range and emission power is
discussed.
