Active sensing of a hidden object using Gaussian and perfect optical vortices speckles: a comparative study

Abstract

Acquiring information such as the shape, height, and image of a target surrounded by scattering obscurants is a challenging problem involving several random processes. In this work, we approach and compare this problem using theoretical and experimental results from the speckle correlation method. This method involves subjecting the target to illumination by random fields generated by Gaussian and perfect optical vortex (POV) beams to evaluate the orientation of the target. We show that the orientation of the object can be obtained from vortex speckles, whereas the Gaussian speckles provide less information regarding the orientation. Additionally, we demonstrate that the POV speckles have better sensitivity to detect the edges of a target than the Gaussian speckles.