SBIR-STTR Award

Our proposed receiver design will satisfy or exceed the requirements set forth in this solicitation. The key innovation is our melding of approaches to produce a compact lightweight receiver with onboard processing that leverages picosecond timing resolution and burst acquisition methodology previously implemented by our team. The receiver architecture will utilize electronic gating, automatic gain control, timing and energy normalization and noise reduction onboard processing techniques in addition to digital demodulation to provide an optimal and versatile receiver design. No other off-the-shelf (OTS) solution currently exists to satisfy the Navys requirements.

Benefit:
We have conducted a thorough review of the literature and have not found a LIDAR receiver that satisfies the requirements stated in the solicitation, primarily due to the challenges presented by a very fast response time and high dynamic range. Our approach offers an elegant solution to this problem by melding key approaches to achieve an optimal design. This stems from our vast experience with imaging systems and receiver designs similar to what was asked for in this solicitation. Commercial applications that would benefit from a hybrid Lidar-radar receiver include biomedical optical imaging and imaging through clouds, smoke and flame. First responders would also benefit from this technology as it would give them the ability to see 0x9D through smoke and flames. The hybrid Lidar-radar relates to optical imaging of tissues and, more particularly, to a light detection and ranging (LIDAR) system for medical diagnostics particularly suited for detecting the presence of inhomogeneities in tissues, such as tumors.

Keywords:
Hybrid Lidar, Hybrid Lidar, Radar

The objective of this program is to develop a hybrid Lidar-radar receiver to efficiently recover and process the radar sub-carrier from a modulated pulsed optical signal in the presence of high levels of optical clutter reaching the receiver just prior to the signal of interest. The receiver will ultimately be used with modulated (0.5 1.0 GHz) blue-green pulsed lasers and is required to have an active detection area of at least 8 mm, as well as high QE in that wavelength region. The main challenges are to design a compatible receiver module that has a fast response time combined with high sensitivity, low noise characteristics and a high enough dynamic range. High dynamic range is required to accommodate weak returns from low reflectance targets at multiple attenuation lengths, as well as higher energy returns from stronger reflectors closer to the receiver. Utilizing high speed digitization, the design allows for flexible digital processing and demodulation.

Benefit:
We have conducted a thorough review of the literature and have not found a LIDAR receiver that satisfies the requirements stated in the solicitation, primarily due to the challenges presented by a very fast response time and high dynamic range. Our approach offers an elegant solution to this problem by melding key approaches to achieve an optimal design. This stems from our vast experience with imaging systems and receiver designs similar to what was asked for in this solicitation. Commercial applications that would benefit from a hybrid Lidar-radar receiver include biomedical optical imaging and imaging through clouds, smoke and flame. First responders would also benefit from this technology as it would give them the ability to see 0x9D through smoke and flames. The hybrid Lidar-radar relates to optical imaging of tissues and, more particularly, to a light detection and ranging (LIDAR) system for medical diagnostics particularly suited for detecting the presence of inhomogeneities in tissues, such as tumors.

Keywords:
hybrid, imaging, LIDAR