This PDF file contains the front matter associated with SPIE Proceedings Volume 10191 including the Title Page, Copyright information, Table of Contents, Introduction, and Conference Committee listing.

A coherent Doppler lidar has been developed to address NASA’s need for a high-performance, compact, and cost-effective velocity and altitude sensor onboard its landing vehicles. Future robotic and manned missions to solar system bodies require precise ground-relative velocity vector and altitude data to execute complex descent maneuvers and safe, soft landing at a pre-designated site. This lidar sensor, referred to as a Navigation Doppler Lidar (NDL), meets the required performance of the landing missions while complying with vehicle size, mass, and power constraints. Operating from up to four kilometers altitude, the NDL obtains velocity and range precision measurements reaching 2 cm/sec and 2 meters, respectively, dominated by the vehicle motion. Terrestrial aerial vehicles will also benefit from NDL data products as enhancement or replacement to GPS systems when GPS is unavailable or redundancy is needed. The NDL offers a viable option to aircraft navigation in areas where the GPS signal can be blocked or jammed by intentional or unintentional interference. The NDL transmits three laser beams at different pointing angles toward the ground to measure range and velocity along each beam using a frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) technique. The three line-of-sight measurements are then combined in order to determine the three components of the vehicle velocity vector and its altitude relative to the ground. This paper describes the performance and capabilities that the NDL demonstrated through extensive ground tests, helicopter flight tests, and onboard an autonomous rocket-powered test vehicle while operating in closedloop with a guidance, navigation, and control (GN and C) system.

Laser radars are widely used for laser detection and ranging in a wide field of application scenarios. In the recent past, new sensing capabilities by transient light imaging have been demonstrated enabling imaging of light pulses during flight and the estimation of position and shape of targets outside the direct field of view. High sensitive imaging sensors are available give the chance to detect laser pulse in flight which are sparsely scattered in air. Theory and experimental investigation of arbitrary light propagation paths show the possibility to reconstruct the light path trajectory. This result could enable the remote localization of laser sources which will become an important reconnaissance task in future scenarios. Further, transient light imaging can reveal information about objects outside the direct field of view or hidden behind an obscuration by computational imaging. In this talk, we present different approaches to realize transient light imaging (e.g. time correlated single photon counting) and their application for relativistic imaging, real-time non-line of sight tracking and reconstruction of hidden scenes.

We report on an airborne demonstration of atmospheric methane (CH4) measurements with an Integrated Path Differential Absorption (IPDA) lidar using an optical parametric oscillator (OPO) and optical parametric amplifier (OPA) laser transmitter and a sensitive avalanche photo detector. The lidar measures the CH4 absorption at multiple, discrete wavelengths around 1650.9 nm. In September 2015, the instrument was deployed on NASA’s DC-8 airborne laboratory and measured atmospheric methane over a wide range of topography and weather conditions from altitudes of 3 km to 13 km. In this paper, we will review the results from our flights, and identify areas of improvement.

Formation of a Textured Digital Elevation Model (TDEM) has been useful in many applications in the fields of agriculture, disaster response, terrain analysis and more. Use of a low-cost small UAV system with a texel camera (fused lidar/digital imagery) can significantly reduce the cost compared to conventional aircraft-based methods. This paper reports continued work on this problem reported in a previous paper by Bybee and Budge, and reports improvements in performance. A UAV fitted with a texel camera is flown at a fixed height above the terrain and swaths of texel image data of the terrain below is taken continuously. Each texel swath has one or more lines of lidar data surrounded by a narrow strip of EO data. Texel swaths are taken such that there is some overlap from one swath to its adjacent swath. The GPS/IMU fitted on the camera also give coarse knowledge of attitude and position. Using this coarse knowledge and the information from the texel image, the error in the camera position and attitude is reduced which helps in producing an accurate TDEM. This paper reports improvements in the original work by using multiple lines of lidar data per swath. The final results are shown and analyzed for numerical accuracy.

In the design or selection of a Doppler lidar instrument for a spacecraft landing system, it is important to evaluate the balance between performance requirements and cost, weight, and power consumption. Leveraging the capability of LadarSIM, a trade-off study was performed to evaluate the interaction between the laser transmission power, aperture diameter, and FFT size in a Doppler lidar system. For this study the probabilities of detection and false alarm were calculated using LadarSIM to simulate FMCW lidar systems with varying power, aperture diameter, and FFT size. This paper reports the results of this trade-off study.

One of the most important aspects of guided systems is detection. The most convenient detection in the sense of precision can be achieved with a laser spot tracker. This study deals with a military grade, high performance and cost-effective laser spot tracker for a guided system. The aim is to develop a high field of view system that will detect a laser spot from a distance of 3 kilometers in which the target is designated from 3 kilometers with a laser. The study basically consists of the system design, modeling, producing and the conducting performance tests of the whole system.

To address the issues of maritime border surveillance or long range UAV identification, we develop two laser imagers (a 2D and a 3D system) with long range (LR) capacities to improve significantly the performances in terms of scope of monitoring and persistence of functions (e.g. H24, degraded visibility...). These systems are based on a new generation of focal plane arrays (FPA) with Avalanche PhotoDiode (APD) and are combined with high-performance image processing ("real-time") devoted to superresolution or tracking. In this paper, we first present the results of several maritime surveillance or Counter- Unmanned Aircraft System (C-UAS) demonstrations respectively conducted on a coastal site and a sensitive area. Comparisons between passive and active sensors are shown. The measurements obtained on various maritime targets are completed by end to end modelling in order to assess the systems performances in various atmospheric environments.

We present a laser rangefinder specifically designed for bathymetric surveying tasks. The compact and lightweight instrument is capable of measuring through the water surface, ideally suited for generating profiles of waterbodies when operated from a UAV. The topo-bathymetric LiDAR sensor comprises a tilt compensation, an IMU/GNSS unit with antenna, a control unit, and supports triggering of external digital cameras. The laser range finder sends out laser pulses at a rate of 4 kHz. The echo signal for each laser pulse is digitized and recorded for the entire range gate of 50 m. This means that predetection averaging of the waveforms can be performed in post processing, increasing the depth performance. The averaging rate can be chosen after the flight on basis of measurement conditions. The waveforms are processed by a full waveform processing algorithm based on exponential decomposition which uses segments of an exponential function as base functions to model the backscatter cross-section of the target objects. Water surface, water column, and ground targets are modeled using a set of base functions of which an optimization selects the most suitable combination to fit the echo signal. This leads to high accuracy of the points and to automatic target classification.

An increasing number of incidents are reported where small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) are involved flying at low altitude. Thus UAVs are becoming more and more a serious threat in civilian and military scenarios leading to serious danger to safety or privacy issues. In this context, the detection and tracking of small UAV flying at low altitude in urban environment or near background structures is a challenge for state of the art detection technologies. In this paper, we focus on detection, tracking and identification by laser sensing technologies that are Laser Gated Viewing and scanning LiDAR. The laser reflection cross-sections (LRCS) has direct impact on the probability to detection and capability for range measurement. Here, we present methods to determine the laser reflection cross-sections by experimental and computational approaches.

Raman lidar measurements provide profiles of several different tracers of spatial and temporal variations, which are excellent signatures for studies of dynamical processes in the atmosphere. An examination of Raman lidar data collected during the last four decades clearly show signatures of atmospheric planetary waves, gravity waves, low-level jets, weather fronts, turbulence from wind shear at surfaces and at the interface of the boundary layer with the free troposphere. Water vapor profiles are found to be important as a tracer of the sources of turbulence eddies associated with thermal convection, pressure waves, and wind shears, which result from surface heating, winds, weather systems, orographic forcing, and regions of reduced atmospheric stability. Examples of these processes are selected to show the influence of turbulence on profiles of atmospheric properties. Turbulence eddies generated in the wind shear region near the top of the boundary layer are found to mix into the atmospheric boundary layer. Results from several prior research projects are examined to gain a better understanding of processes impacting optical propagation through the many sources of turbulence observed in the lower atmosphere. Advances in lasers, detectors, and particularly in high-speed electronics now available are expected to provide important opportunities to improve our understanding of the formation processes, as well as for tracking of the sources and dissipation of turbulence eddies.

Classification in LIDAR data is the process of determining points on terrain types and objects, often with the goal of determining land use and/or building footprints. In this paper we endeavor to classify terrain types and objects at a high level of detail in a complex scene that includes buildings, forested areas, and steep hillsides. Our object classes include buildings, building rooftop structures, forest trees, landscape trees, landscape bushes, cars, light posts of varying sizes, fences, paved surfaces, and grass. Our classification method of choice is a Random Forest, but we also investigate other machine learning methods including K-Nearest Neightbors and Linear Discriminant Analysis. We evaluate the effectiveness of the algorithms for accuracy, required training sample size, and runtime.

Speckle can complicate signal acquisition in coherent laser systems such as Laser Doppler Vibrometry (LDV). Variations in the speckle pattern at the reliever due to fluctuations in the system such as beam pointing can lead to impulsive events in the signature. The beam size at the object has a direct influence on the size of the speckle at the receiving aperture. Increasing the beam spot size reduces the average speckle size, but also decreases the strength of the signal coupled with the local oscillator in the LDV. In this paper, we derive the relationship between scattering spot size at the object and average speckle size at the receiver. Theory is presented on how increasing the beam diameter at the object can reduce the fluctuations of the heterodyned signal coupled with the Local Oscillator (LO). The Antenna theorem is presented to show the tradeoff between angular field of view and capture area. We show experimental results on the effects of speckle size and decreasing signal strength have on the stability of an LDV signature. We use a kurtosis metric previously reported in the literature to assess the stability and quality of the return signature.

We present a unique external cavity diode laser system that can be auto-locked with reference to atomic and molecular spectra. The vacuum-sealed laser head design uses an interchangeable base-plate comprised of a laser diode and optical elements that can be selected for desired wavelength ranges. The feedback light to the laser diode is provided by a narrow-band interference filter, which can be tuned from outside the laser cavity to fineadjust the output wavelength in vacuum. To stabilize the laser frequency, the digital laser controller relies either on a pattern-matching algorithm stored in memory, or on first or third derivative feedback. We have used the laser systems to perform spectroscopic studies in rubidium at 780 nm, and in iodine at 633 nm. The linewidth of the 780-nm laser system was measured to be ∼500 kHz, and we present Allan deviation measurements of the beat note and the lock stability. Furthermore, we show that the laser system can be the basis for a new class of lidar transmitters in which a temperature-stabilized fiber-Bragg grating is used to generate frequency references for on-line points of the transmitter. We show that the fiber-Bragg grating spectra can be calibrated with reference to atomic transitions.

We present a laser technology development with space flight heritage to generate laser wavelengths in the near- to midinfrared (NIR to MIR) for space lidar applications. Integrating an optical parametric crystal to the LOLA (Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter) laser transmitter design affords selective laser wavelengths from NIR to MIR that are not easily obtainable from traditional diode pumped solid-state lasers. By replacing the output coupler of the LOLA laser with a properly designed parametric crystal, we successfully demonstrated a monolithic intra-cavity optical parametric oscillator (iOPO) laser based on all high technology readiness level (TRL) subsystems and components. Several desired wavelengths have been generated including 2.1 µm, 2.7 μm and 3.4 μm. This laser can also be used in trace-gas remote sensing, as many molecules possess their unique vibrational transitions in NIR to MIR wavelength region, as well as in time-of-flight mass spectrometer where desorption of samples using MIR laser wavelengths have been successfully demonstrated

In 2016, we presented a low SWaP wirelessly controlled MEMS mirror-based LiDAR prototype which utilized an OEM laser rangefinder for distance measurement [1]. The MEMS mirror was run in open loop based on its exceptionally fast design and high repeatability performance. However, to further extend the bandwidth and incorporate necessary eyesafety features, we recently focused on providing mirror position feedback and running the system in closed loop control. Multiple configurations of optical position sensors, mounted on both the front- and the back-side of the MEMS mirror, have been developed and will be presented. In all cases, they include a light source (LED or laser) and a 2D photosensor. The most compact version is mounted on the backside of the MEMS mirror ceramic package and can “view” the mirror‟s backside through openings in the mirror‟s PCB and its ceramic carrier. This version increases the overall size of the MEMS mirror submodule from ~12mm x 12mm x 4mm to ~15mm x 15mm x 7mm. The sensors also include optical and electronic filtering to reduce effects of any interference from the application laser illumination. With relatively simple FPGA-based PID control running at the sample rate of 100 kHz, we could configure the overall response of the system to fully utilize the MEMS mirror‟s native bandwidth which extends well beyond its first resonance. When compared to the simple open loop method of suppressing overshoot and ringing which significantly limits bandwidth utilization, running the mirrors in closed loop control increased the bandwidth to nearly 3.7 times. A 2.0mm diameter integrated MEMS mirror with a resonant frequency of 1300 Hz was limited to 500Hz bandwidth in open loop driving but was increased to ~3kHz bandwidth with the closed loop controller. With that bandwidth it is capable of very sharply defined uniform-velocity scans (sawtooth or triangle waveforms) which are highly desired in scanned mirror LiDAR systems. A 2.4mm diameter mirror with +/-12° of scan angle achieves over 1.3kHz of flat response, allowing sharp triangle waveforms even at 300Hz (600 uniform velocity lines per second). The same methodology is demonstrated with larger, bonded mirrors. Here closed loop control is more challenging due to the additional resonance and a more complex system dynamic. Nevertheless, results are similar - a 5mm diameter mirror bandwidth was increased from ~150Hz to ~500Hz.

LiDAR waveform analysis is a relatively new activity in the area of laser scanning. The work described here is an exploration of a different approach to visualization and analysis, following the structure that has evolved for the analysis of imaging spectroscopy data (hyperspectral imaging). The waveform data are transformed into 3-dimensional data structures that provide xy position information, and a z-coordinate, which is the digitized waveform. This allows for representation of the data in spatial and waveform space, the extraction of characteristic spectra, and the development of regions of interest. This representation allows for the application of standard spectral classification tools such as the maximum likelihood classifier.

Data from the Optech Titan airborne laser scanner were collected over Monterey, CA, in three wavelengths (532 nm, 1064 nm, and 1550 nm), in May 2016, by the National Center for Airborne LiDAR Mapping (NCALM). Analysis techniques have been developed using spectral technology largely derived from the analysis of spectral imagery. Data are analyzed as individual points, vs techniques that emphasize spatial binning. The primary tool which allows for this exploitation is the N-Dimensional Visualizer contained in the ENVI software package. The results allow for significant improvement in classification accuracy compared to results obtained from techniques derived from standard LiDAR analysis tools