United States of America as Represented by the Secretary of the Air Force

Michael S Salisbury

Gary Dean Sharp

Paul Francis McManamon

Steven A Serati

To greatly increase the sensitivity of a Heterodyne Ladar System, the receiver incorporates an optical preamplifier to amplify the ladar return signal prior to detection. This results in an increase in return signal power on the order of 25 dB. Spontaneous emission noise added by the fiber amplifier counters this gain in a normal scheme. The proposed receiver, however, incorporates a Polarization Optical Mixer to perform balanced mixing, thus rejecting added spontaneous emission beat noise terms and resulting in a large increase in system sensitivity.

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Dayton, OH, United States of America

Michael S Salisbury