Statistical backscatter suppression technique for a wideband hybrid lidar-radar ranging system

A new backscatter suppression technique is applied to a wideband modulation scheme to enhance optical ranging in underwater environments. The statistical digital signal processing (DSP) approach of blind signal separation (BSS) [1–2] is applied to a frequency domain reflectometry (FDR) [3–4] ranging system. Applying BSS to the FDR system allows the backscatter return to be dynamically measured and cancelled out before computing range. Results from simulations and laboratory experiments are presented to demonstrate the combined FDR/BSS approach.