Picosecond eye-safe Raman laser for advanced ranging and tracking

Commercial ranging systems (both beam modulation and pulsed time of flight systems) have an operating range and accuracy far below the needs for moving target system qualification testing and model validation. A new, eye-safe, long operating range, accurate (order of cm) ranging system must be developed. The most feasible approach to achieve this capability requires an ultrashort pulse laser system in conjunction with time-of-flight measurement methods. Accordingly, the Institute of Applied Physics and Sandia National Laboratories are developing an advanced ranging system for use in Sandia's mobile laser tracker for quantification of the flight dynamics of high speed moving targets. Key to this development is a new laser. This paper presents a new picosecond Raman laser capable of range measurements to 50 km with 1 cm accuracy in the presence of atmospheric turbulence.

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