Three-dimensional coherent ladar based on FMCW and its flight demonstration

A scanning three-dimensional coherent laser radar (ladar) based on the frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) is proposed and demonstrated, which can obtain many three-dimensional high-quality images. The system utilizes an electro-optic modulator and an optical filter to output a linear FMCW with a bandwidth of 2 GHz. The flexible and variable rotating double prism is used for beam scanning. The images of flight demonstration are formed by attitude compensation correction. The experiment result validates the performance of our system for airborne three-dimensional scanning imaging.