2D angular synthetic aperture laser optical feedback imaging

For synthetic aperture (SA) operation in the optical domain, microchip laser sources seem to be relevant by reasons of their compactness and their high temporal and spatial coherence (laser linewidth less than 1 kHz and laser beam divergence close to the diffraction limit). The main objective of this study is to combine the high resolution of SA experiment (i.e. beyond the diffraction limit) with the high sensitivity and the simplicity of the LOFI (Laser Optical Feedback Imaging) experiment to obtain a very efficient and compact device for 2D imaging. We have successfully developed a self-aligned two-dimensional synthetic aperture ladar using frequency-shifted optical feedback combined with a galvanometric scanning.