All optical Synthetic Aperture Lidar sensing-to-processing chain based on SAR technology

Synthetic Aperture Lidar (SAL) is an emerging technology that has the potential to offer high resolution images from space with a compact payload. This paper presents a unique synthetic aperture lidar system prototype system that is all optical. That is, not only is the data collection system optical (fiber based), but the data processing is also performed optically (using sets of lenses). Such a compact fully integrated all-optical system would be ideal for image capture and processing to be performed nearly simultaneously on-board. The final high resolution images could be thus directly downlinked to operation users in a timely fashion.