Holographic aperture ladar with range compression.

Simultaneous range compression and aperture synthesis is experimentally demonstrated with a stepped linear frequency modulated waveform and holographic aperture ladar. The resultant three-dimensional (3D) data has high resolution in the aperture synthesis dimension and is recorded using a conventional low bandwidth focal plane array. Individual cross-range field segments are coherently combined using data driven registration and phase correction methods allowing range compression to be performed without the benefit of a coherent waveform. Furthermore, we demonstrate a synergistically enhanced ability to discriminate image objects due to the coaction of range compression and aperture synthesis. We show that two objects can be precisely located in 3D space, despite being unresolved in two directions, due to resolution gains in both the range and azimuth cross-range dimensions.