Synthetic aperture is a way to overcome the spatial resolution limitation given by limited physical of an observation instrument. Active synthetic aperture techniques at optical wavelengths are presented. We show that 2D arrays of detectors overcome the co-phasing problem of the sub-pupils provided there is an overlap between each acquisition. This technique was applied to short range imaging at 633nm in laboratory environment, yielding to diffraction limited pupils 16 times larger than the original pupil without external measurement of the pupil phase history.

Date Published: 17 February 2003
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 4833, Applications of Photonic Technology 5, (17 February 2003); doi: 10.1117/12.474741

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 4833:
Applications of Photonic Technology 5
Roger A. Lessard; George A. Lampropoulos; Gregory W. Schinn, Editor(s)